


Call Me A Fool

by FernWithy



Series: The Wedding Guitar [9]
Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: Being Lost, Fame, Family, Future Fic, Gen, Home, Music, News Media, Social Media, Spirit Guides
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-02-07 06:52:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 66,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18615391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FernWithy/pseuds/FernWithy
Summary: Ten years after his adventure in the Land of the Dead, Miguel is in an even more exotic world--fame--and he escapes it to go home to Santa Cecilia... but can Santa Cecilia ever be the same?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a medium-length story, I think. It's following the events of the two short stories in "On The Road":  
> [Fitting In](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16291679/chapters/38545535)  
> [Grown-Ups](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16291679/chapters/38483864)  
> (Grown-Ups, in particular, is a lead-in.)

_TOP TEN REASONS YOU NEED TO LEARN SPANISH RIGHT NOW!_  
_from lookatitrightnow.com, March 2027_  
_1\. MIGUEL RIVERA_  
_What, you thought we were going to make a political argument? You don’t know us very well! If you don’t have your eye on this delectable churro, you’re not looking_ en la dirección correcta! _A classical prodigy, famous in music circles in Mexico before he finished high school, he exploded onto the Mexican pop scene at eighteen, revealed as the composer for half of the hits from Las Lechuzas, with quirky performance videos all over Latin America (and even some_ en el norte! _), suddenly, you couldn’t open a Mexican fan site without seeing him. Romantically linked to pop star Ximena Maravilla for nearly a year (during which he penned her song, “Si Solo,” which held the top spot on the Latin charts for six weeks in 2024) and more recently with socialite ballerina Anja Huttmacher, he started getting his own hits after his Netflix concert, “Oíga!,” went viral in 2025. But don’t let the pop star status fool you—he’s a serious musician, and instead of just falling into the party scene, he went to study classical music in Austria, and wrote a Latin-inspired musical,_ La Niñera _, opening next month… and you better know Spanish if you mean to see it, because it’s years from being translated. Miguel may speak four languages, but he only composes in one of them, so if you want a good excuse to do some_ estuiando _of your_ español _, you can’t do better than this one…  
_  
_**********_  
  
_THINGS TO KEEP IN THE SHADOWS  
from modamala, May 2027  
Oh, Miguelito, Miguelito. We can’t fault your shoes—who’s going to fault a decent pair of Rivera boots?—but everything north of them… Oh, chamaco, someone needs to have a heartfelt and serious talk with you and your stylist—unless you’ve already fired him—about gold trim anywhere outside of Mariachi Plaza. We are willing to be the ones to do it! We could get behind the purple. Nothing wrong with experimenting a little bit. Too many men are scared of color. With a few reservations, we could even stand with that shade, though it’s a little bright.  You can pull it off.  But gold trim… honey, you’re at an opera opening in Vienna—_your _opera, we feel we should point out—not playing for pesos in Santa Cecilia…!_  
  
_**********  
  
QUIZ: WHICH MIGUEL RIVERA SONG ARE YOU?  
from GRRRL Power, September 2027  
You know all the words (and we bet you’ve been translating them!), but are you more of an old-school “En La Sombra” girl, or the wishful “Si Solo” type? You could be the romantic, “Cecilia, Amor,” or the fun-loving “Sigue Loco”! Or just maybe you’re hardcore and dramatic, and you’re the new breakaway stage hit, “¿Para Qué Sirve?”! Take our quiz and find out!..._  
  
Miguel crossed into Santa Cecilia just before ten o’clock on a Thursday night.  He killed the engine on the bike and leaned over the handlebars, resting in the shadow of the abandoned building that had once been the convent orphanage, looking down into the town as Mamá Imelda must have seen it when she was a child here, a little glittering spot in the darkness, the light rising up to the church, then fading away as the land sloped down toward the unseen sea far away.  
  
He took off his helmet and let the wind at his back blow through his hair (Abuelita would probably want him to cut it soon, and he would do it.)  He’d made it. He’d really gotten here.  
  
With the exception of an interminable airport stop in Paris, he’d been on the move for almost thirty-six hours, getting what sleep he’d managed during the transatlantic leg of the trip. He’d left Salzburg more or less on a whim (if wanting to leave for eight months could ever qualify as a whim; the decision to actually do it had been an overnight thing—he’d woken up, called the airline, and started packing). He hadn’t been able to get a flight directly into Oaxaca that day, but instead of postponing, he’d flown into the capital and rented the motorcycle. It was better. It was time to bring his mind back, to get the air of Mexico in his lungs, and get the airlines and the apartment and the opera house out of them before he saw his family. It had to be the motorcycle. He wanted to be _in_ the world, to feel it passing around him, not sitting in a self-contained bubble trying to work through a musical problem while the self-driving car moved _him_ through _it_.  
  
It wasn’t that he had anything against Austria. He liked it. There was a kind of beauty in the fussy, ornate old buildings, and in the new, open ones. The musical history of the place seeped out of the sidewalks. He loved classical European music almost as much as he loved Mexican music. He’d liked and respected his teachers, and he’d had what Carlos referred to as “musical friends to play with,” if not real, lifelong sorts of friends. The thing with Anja had gone bad, but he couldn’t blame his discontent on that. Yes, she’d pestered him to make more and more ties to the European musical world, and yes, she’d laughed at his desire to return to “East Nowhere, Mexico” (“You can go anywhere, Knuddelbärchen,” she’d crooned at him in March. “Rome, London, Madrid… why would you want to go back to that place?”). But they’d broken up six months ago, and he’d kept taking meetings and planning shows and signing up for classes, and his heart kept saying, _Go home. Go home now, before it’s too late_.  
  
He’d been calling home every day, asking if everything was all right, and everything seemed to be. Rosa was engaged. Abel and Serafina’s second baby—a boy named Julio—had been born in July. Everyone was healthy. Everyone still loved him. He still loved them. But still, _Before it’s too late._  
  
He’d been writing long, chatty letters to Mamá Coco every day, which he hadn’t expected. He’d thought eventually, the letters would become a chore, but these days, he thought they were more important to him than they would be to her. He’d done some of them as videos—he’d have to leave her a tablet on the ofrenda—just to keep the taste of Spanish in his mouth. The letters were very detailed about his life (if vague on things he didn’t think she’d _want_ details about), with mundane stories from his classes and his rehearsals. He even ran through some of his re-writes with her first, adding a few notes to Mamá Imelda, since the libretto was her story about the night her niñera had rescued her, along with the twins, from the rampaging mob that had burned her house. He hadn’t quite dared to write about Mamá Imelda and Papá Héctor themselves, but he’d thought a great deal about their histories. He knew he wanted to write next about Papá Héctor’s mother, who’d abandoned him as an infant—who he was increasingly convinced was a woman named Maribel Campana—and even had a few lyrics started.  
  
All of it was good. His life was good. He hadn’t hit “rock bottom,” whatever that meant. He hadn’t forgotten anyone, including himself. He wasn’t frying his brain on a homemade pharmacy, the way some of his fellow students did. He wasn’t a libertine. In fact, to his annoyance, the crew that had done his Netflix concert sneered at his so-called “virtue” and called him “San Miguel” when they thought he couldn’t hear. And Giada Strozzi—the pretty Florentine soprano playing the lead in _La Niñera_ , who had a face like a painting and a voice that danced over Miguel’s melodies like a marigold petal on a mountain stream—had referred to him as “Il Puritano” since he’d turned her down at the opening night cast party, when he’d still been with Anja. He wasn’t turning into some kind of show business monster like de la Cruz. There weren’t actually all that many of them, though the ones who were there tended to be memorable.  
  
But something inside him was pulling him back. He’d tried to think of metaphors for it—a riptide, an anchor—but in the end, all he could come up with was that flashing golden light on Papá Héctor’s bones. Everything seemed all right, but… it was flashing anyway. There was a sense of having grasped the petal, of being caught between worlds, but he was deliberately staying away, and if he didn’t let it take him home soon, he’d be gone forever.  
  
Which made no sense. He’d never made a secret of his intention to go home. He’d never wavered in it.  
  
But still.  
  
_Before it’s too late.  
_  
The last day in Salzburg, he’d gone to dinner with a producer who wanted to find a French translator for _La Niñera_ , played the grand piano on one of the school stages, and taken a quiz to find out which one of his songs best captured his soul. (It was “Si Solo”—“You have a wistful, dreamy soul, and you’re in love with being in love! Like the whimsical ‘If Only,’ you want the world to be kind and generous, and can be hurt easily when it isn’t! You should be proud to be a dreamer!” He had sent this result to Ximena, now touring Australia, and she’d sent back an eye-roller cartoon.) Then he’d gone home, written the beginning of a song for a woman trying to decide to abandon her child, then fallen asleep and dreamed that he was in the cenote, that he was a skeleton, that Papá Héctor wasn’t there and Dante and Pepita never found him. He just cried out to the sky, over and over, his voice echoing on the stone walls, while the Maya gods looked on indifferently. One of them, now etched in stone in the old style, was still unmistakably Ernesto de la Cruz.  
  
After he woke up, he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking, _It will pass if I don’t do anything about it_. But the image in his mind’s eye stayed with him, seeming to stare at him from the inside, and instead of being a comfort, the idea that he really might fail to do anything, that the message of the dream might pass him by, overtook him, and he reached over for his phone to arrange a flight.  
  
When he’d crossed the state line into Oaxaca, he’d had to pull over. He was shaking and elated, and he’d turned off onto a narrow dirt road across from the sign and crouched beside the bike, holding onto the handlebars for balance with one hand while the other fretted across the long grass. He considered pulling his guitar from his back and playing something right there, for the benefit of the lizards and field mice, but now he could feel Santa Cecilia pulling him forward, and finally, he’d started moving again.  
  
And now, the town was spread out at his feet. He could see where the street lights picked up, at the old abandoned train depot near the foot of the hill. Beyond that, there was the shell of what used to be the livery, and was now a kind of open-air market. Then there were three houses and the bakery and…  
  
He could see the lights on in the courtyard at the hacienda. The shape of the sign on the old house was just a shadow in the night, but he knew it. There were lights on in the new house. He couldn’t see the low walls of the rooms his parents and siblings had, but he could imagine them. The kids were probably in bed, but he imagined Mamá and Papá and Tío Berto and Tía Carmen and Tía Gloria, sitting up in the courtyard, maybe having a beer and wondering if Miguel was going to call again and ask if everyone was all right. He could have called ahead. Maybe he should have. But it hadn’t seemed real until right now.  
  
They were really there.  
  
_He_ was really _here_.  
  
He got back onto the motorcycle and started to gun the engine, but decided not to. Instead, he balanced it and walked it silently back into town along the foot trails. No one noticed him as he made his way down the path, with its uneven stone steps, and the only people in the market were busy dickering with a tourist over a blanket. (The tourist, thankfully, was facing away.) A little girl in one of the houses looked out the window without a lot of interest, but gave him a friendly wave. He returned it.  
  
Then he was passing the bakery, and the gate to the hacienda was in front of him. It was ajar. He edged the motorcycle inside and parked it beside Mamá’s minivan. He looked into its windows. It was a happy mess of Coco’s discarded drawings and staff paper, Teto’s alphabet practice, and Ángel’s old cookie wrappers. He spread his hand out on the glass, staring inside as he’d once stared into de la Cruz’s tomb, wondering if he was still a part of this.  
  
He took a deep breath and tiptoed into the new courtyard, the one that was ringed with the places everyone slept. The new addition—now five years old—was dark, but there were windows on both sides of Mamá’s sewing room, and he could see through the old courtyard, between the workshop and the kitchen. There was no beer, but otherwise, it was what he’d imagined. Mamá was sitting beside Papá, their arms around each other companionably. Tío Berto was tinkering with a flamenco shoe. Abuelita—now usually Mamá Elena—and Papá Franco (Miguel was startled at how old his grandparents looked) had apparently been going over the books, as the laptop was out, but they’d shoved it aside. Papá Franco was leaning forward eagerly, talking to Abel’s wife, Serafina, about something. Abel was talking to a man Miguel didn’t know, but judging by the dreamy look on Rosa’s face, he was the mythical fiancé, Alejo. Tía Carmen and Tía Gloria were chopping vegetables. He couldn’t really hear what they were saying from here, but everyone seemed to be laughing softly, smiling, and enjoying each other.  
  
“HEY!”  
  
He jumped. Two teenage boys with baseball bats had run out from the shadows, looking furious.  
  
Miguel jumped aside before either of them could hit him. “Manny! Benny! Calm down!”  
  
Manny dropped his bat with a clamor, going slack jawed. Benny still looked confused. “Why are you…?” Then the penny dropped, and his bat with it, and he said. “Oh. Oh.”  
  
”Miguel!”  
  
Mamá ran out, and before he could even get a look at her up close, she had grabbed him, and was hugging and kissing him as furiously as Abuelita ever had. “Oh, mijo, querido, Miguel, why… how… what are you… why didn’t you…?”  
  
He hugged her back. “Hola, Mamá.”  
  
She put her hands on his face and her eyes moved over it, as if looking for some proof of his reality.  
  
He grinned at her, the old one that always made her shake her head and roll her eyes.  
  
She laughed and hugged him again. “Oh, mijo. Mijo. Why are you here? Never mind. I don’t care. I’ll get you something to eat. Do you want something? Anything!”  
  
“Anything would be great. I’ve been… it’s been a long day.”  
  
Papá managed to get an arm in and pulled him into another embrace. “You’ll tell us tomorrow why you’re here?” he asked. “How long…?”  
  
“I’m back,” Miguel said. “I don’t know… it was time to leave. It was time to come home.”  
  
“So, you’ll be staying!” Mamá Elena smiled and held out her arms.  
  
Miguel hugged her more carefully than he’d hugged his parents. “If I can.”  
  
“Eeeeeeggggh,” she said, waving her hand. “What kind of thing is that to say? _If I can_. This is your home, and it is always open to you.” She looked at Manny and Benny in frustration. “And the two of you, going after your cousin! You can’t have forgotten what he looks like, he’s on a billboard in the plaza.”  
  
“We didn’t…”  
  
“We couldn’t see…”  
  
“…just someone in the yard, looking in windows…”  
  
“…and we…”  
  
“And you came out barefoot and in pajamas.” Abel said. “If he’d really been an intruder, what were you planning to do? Frighten him with your smelly armpits?”  
  
“We had bats,” Manny said.  
  
“And an intruder could have had a gun. Who left the gate open?” Tío Berto looked apologetically at Miguel. “I know you don’t have a key. We’ll get you one. We had to change it.”  
  
Miguel frowned. “What’s happening?”  
  
“There’s time for that tomorrow,” Tío Berto said firmly. “Come, come. Tell us about your trip.”  
  
Miguel allowed himself to be led to the table, where Mamá Elena plied him with juice and water and fruit while Mamá appeared to be cooking the entire kitchen’s worth of food. (Tía Gloria caught his glance and winked. “I’ll get her slowed down.”)  
  
He wanted to know about all of them (especially Rosa’s fiancé, who had a shoemaker’s apron and a heavy accent from somewhere south of the border, but was otherwise a complete mystery), but they were full of questions about Europe, and the opera, and his classes, and what “the girl situation” might be. Mamá Elena spat on the ground when he told them that he’d split with Anja because she didn’t want him to come back. He didn’t tell them everything about the last thirty-six hours, or the way he’d been shaking when he crossed the state line, or how he’d dug his hands into the grass and almost cried with relief. He didn’t understand it, and he didn’t want to come off as over-dramatic.  
  
Rosa had questions about Giada, who seemed to have spoken to an Italian tabloid that was picked up locally. “Something about things people didn’t know about you?”  
  
“Things like me”—Miguel glanced at Manny and Benny—“like not taking her on a date to a party when I already had another girlfriend.”  
  
“Ah, scandalous.”  
  
“Well, you know me. Bad to the bone.”  
  
She rolled her eyes so hard that Miguel half expected them to fall back out of their sockets and land in her mouth.  
  
He pinched her nose. “So tell me about—”  
  
“Miguel?”  
  
He looked up. Coco was standing at the end of the table, rubbing her eyes sleepily. He smiled at her. “I was going to wake you up in the morning, Coquis. You need your sl—”  
  
She ran around the table and tackled him before he could finish. “I knew you were coming back! Manny and Benny said you were a grown-up and you were rich and you probably weren’t going to come home to stay, but you promised, and I knew you would!” She hugged him fiercely.  
  
He hugged her back. Over her head, he could see the twins looking in every direction other than his.  
  
The conversation went on. He kept trying to steer it back to them, but he was brushed off with comments like, “Oh, you know Santa Cecilia, nothing ever changes. What was it like to play for the prince of Monaco?” (More or less like playing for any other music lover.) “Did you meet Princess Charlotte in England?” (The closest he’d gotten was a friend of Eugenie’s.) “Did the Pope really bless you?” (Yes, and he’d brought back a crucifix for Mamá Elena, and say, how were things with—) “Was your opera really in the same place Mozart had operas?” (They said so.) “Why were you dating that awful girl?” (The answer was that she was beautiful and adventurous and… but he opted not to go into that in front of the twins and Coco, so he just said, “She wasn’t always mean. And Rosa, how did you meet—”) “What does German sound like? Did you really talk German for a whole year and a half? Say German for me!” (Coco der komisches.)  
  
It was almost midnight—marking roughly twenty hours that Miguel had been up, after a two hour nap on the plane—when he saw that Papá was looking at him sharply.  
  
“I’m okay,” he said.  
  
“You need sleep. So does your sister. So do all of us. Your room is a little dusty, but it’s still yours. We’ll all catch up in the morning, Miguel. I’ll show you the station we built for Serafina. She’s been making beautiful purses.”  
  
Miguel smiled. It wasn’t much… but it was enough to know that Papá had been listening. “Can I kiss the boys?”  
  
“Don’t wake them up. We’ll never get them back to sleep, and Teto has school in the morning.  Surprise them tomorrow.”  
  
So Miguel said goodnight to everyone, carried Coco back to her room to tuck her in, and went across the breezeway to the room his little brothers shared. Teto was sleeping spread-eagled in a patch of moonlight from the window, and Ángel was curled up at the foot of his bed, his arm around…  
  
Miguel smiled. “Hey, Pepita,” he whispered.  
  
Pepita looked up with a sleepy purr, then tucked her head neatly over her paws and nudged under Ángel’s pudgy hand. Miguel kissed both of them, then went over to Teto, meaning to just give him a little kiss on the head.  
  
His eyes opened blearily, and he said, with no surprise, “Hola, Miguel.” Then he rolled onto his side and went back to sleep. Miguel smoothed his hair down and smiled.  
  
Then he went to his old room, flung back his dusty blanket, and didn’t wake up until two o’clock the next afternoon, when an express mail truck arrived with his boxes from Salzburg.  



	2. Chapter 2

_FROM_ NO APOLOGIES: AN AUTOMORTOGRAPHY _  
by Ernesto de la Cruz  
March, 2027  
And this family that you wish to lionize? I knew them. I knew Imelda Rivera of old. She was a cold woman long before she was a crazy one. It should surprise no one that she crushed the dreams of generations of her family. It was she who jailed them. I, who you revile, saved them._  
  
**********  
_  
MIGUEL RIVERA “CAN’T RUN FAR ENOUGH AWAY”  
from Más Alla, April 2027  
I’m sure all of us who were here remember the excitement when the living child, Miguel Rivera, crossed the Marigold Bridge ten years ago. In all of the years since, it has been presented as a charming story of family reconciliation, but newly arrived reporter Lola Martinez says that it hasn’t played out that way in the living world. “Miguel has made quite the career for himself,” she says, “but he’s barely been seen in Santa Cecilia since he left for the Conservatory three years ago, and extended his ‘semester’ in Europe indefinitely, producing a musical about Mexico, but not setting foot here.”  
  
While it is notoriously difficult to get former Santa Cecilians to speak on the record, off the record, many here in our city have told us about the strange and cruel home founded by matriarch Imelda Rivera…_  
  
**********  
_  
THE SEARCH FOR “LA NIÑERA”  
from Traqueteo de Huesos  
Miguel Rivera, also known as “El Viviendo” for his famous early visit to our land, has plumbed the depths of Rivera family history, looking for a woman who allegedly saved the life of his great-great-grandmother, later named Imelda Rivera, written as the daughter of brutal hacendados in Guerrero. If la niñera wishes to be found, to tell us the truth about this thrilling tale, please, feel free to contact us…_  
  
Imelda waited on the plaza outside Marigold Grand Central, watching the sky for the flash of blue and green that would mean Pepita was back, that she’d accomplished whatever she thought she could accomplish in the land of the living, though Imelda had no clear idea what that might be. She hadn’t had any premonitions of anyone being ill, and Pepita hadn’t had the nervous, cautious air that she did when she was going to retrieve a soul from the hacienda.  
  
Instead, the alebrije had been pacing furiously up and down the street outside the shop, growling and pawing at the cobblestones. There was no mystery about the source of her anger. Imelda was angry, too. But three days ago, Pepita had stopped her pacing, looked through a window at Imelda, and taken off into the evening. She hadn’t been seen since.  
  
“Mamá!”  
  
Imelda turned slowly, looking over her shoulder. Coco was hurrying across the plaza. She had straightened up a little in the last few years, and was enjoying the clothes that the family had left her—today, she was wearing a sort of flared skirt with a scoop-necked sweater that looked like things she’d worn in the fifties—but she still moved gingerly, taking care of the arthritis that had plagued her for the last several decades of her life, even though there was nothing for it to take root in here. She would get over it. People did.  
  
It took her a minute to arrive, and Imelda made no move to join her. She stood, arms crossed.  
  
“Mamá,” Coco rebuked her. “Mamá, we’ve talked about this.”  
  
“ _You’ve_ talked about it. You and your papá. And the twins. And Victoria. Julio and Dante have been kind enough to mind their business.”  
  
“Mamá…”  
  
“I will not be a prisoner in my own workshop, Coco.”  
  
“No one is saying you should be. But don’t go out alone. You might not… well… the roads…”  
  
Imelda snorted. “You think I wouldn’t enjoy a chance to go visit de la Cruz in Odiados and kick him in the head again?”  
  
“Don’t joke, Mamá. I waited fifty years to see you. Papá waited even longer. No one wants you to get lost on the way home and end up making shoes for Cortés.”  
  
Imelda tightened her jaw. There was no arguing the point. She’d almost gotten lost three times so far. “It’s absurd,” she said, starting back toward the gate, Coco following in her wake. “My family forgave me. What business is it of anyone else’s?”  
  
“None,” Coco said. “Mamá, slow down.”  
  
Imelda stopped at the edge of the plaza. The agent who usually checked for her photo on Día de Muertos was processing a newcomer at the moment, but she took a moment to look up and glare. Imelda glared back. _She_ wouldn’t mind if Imelda disappeared. Imelda had seen the way she smiled at Héctor every year and batted her eyelashes.  
  
Coco linked her arm through Imelda’s and led her through the gate. “Mamá, let it go. It’s not important.”  
  
Imelda allowed herself to be steered back into the city, past the great doors of the Department of Family Reunions. Music boomed from the discoteca, whose doors were open in the mid-afternoon. It was some kind of modern, electronic thing, and she would normally stop and shake her head at it, but she could see the people out front turning to look at her. People were in line at the cinema already. The current show—a musical called _¡Bernardo!_ , which was about a Puerto Rican boy killed in a street fight and trying to make amends to his cousin—was a smash hit, and almost always sold out. Imelda wanted to see it, but she didn’t want the looks she’d get. So she’d asked Héctor to just teach her the songs. She wanted to see the dancing, and hold Héctor’s hand and clap when Bernardo and the boy he’d killed before dying turned together to fight the people who’d made them fight in the first place.   
  
But it was out of the question now. People would get up and leave her row if they noticed her there. That wouldn’t be fun for anyone.  
  
With a sigh, she followed Coco down the narrow street beside the theater, where they caught a tram to the craftsmen’s district (the driver meticulously ignored her), and alighted outside the workshop. Héctor was on a ladder, cleaning the sign. She could still see enough of the paint to know what someone had called her.  
  
“Don’t bother,” she said dully. “It’ll be back tomorrow, anyway.”  
  
“I’m bothering,” Héctor said. “They can’t talk to you that way.”  
  
She managed a smile. “You always said that. It never stopped them from talking that way.” She sighed. “This isn’t new, Héctor. It’s been a while, but I’ve been called names before.”  
  
“Not in a place where your reputation can kill you.”  
  
She went inside with Coco. Héctor would keep scrubbing, and she knew there was nothing she could say to stop him from doing it.  
  
She loved him for that. She always had.   
  
“Mamá… you’re smiling.”  
  
“Just a memory.”  
  
“Tell it to me”  
  
“I was thirteen. I was pretending to be a boy to learn to make guitars—the old man in the shop wouldn’t teach me as Imelda. I’d just gotten found out, and I was kicked out for lying. I forgot to put on my boy-face.” Imelda made an exaggerated grimace of the sort she’d worn then, thinking that boys must look angry all the time, though she didn’t remember where she’d gotten that idea. “Mostly because I was staring at the boy who came in to practice the guitar.”  
  
“Papá,” Coco guessed.  
  
“Papá. Anyway, some of the men outside jeered when I went out in my breeches, and Héctor decided he was going to tell them what was what. You have to understand—he was twelve and about a head shorter than I was, with a soprano voice, and he was so skinny he looked like a stick figure. He didn’t care. He asked me what my name was—I’d been calling myself Ignacio—and I told him it was Imelda, then he said, ‘You don’t talk to Imelda like that!’ It was the first day he knew my name, and already…” She laughed. “Do you know, I’d forgotten that until right this moment? I remembered the guitar. I remembered that we were friends right away. I forgot that he cursed at full-grown men on my behalf before he had the slightest idea who I was.”  
  
There was a shuffling in the corner, and Dante came out. His colors had been fading lately—no one knew why—and he moved like Coco did. As soon as Imelda sat down, he came over to her and rested his chin on her knee, looking up with pale pink and green eyes as she scratched between his ears. He whined plaintively.  
  
“Your friend isn’t back yet,” Imelda told him. “I’m sorry. I’ve made a mess for everyone.”  
  
“Mamá, don’t. It feels worse than it is. This is… this is a handful of people.”  
  
“A handful. So unimportant that all of you are worried they’ll send me to Odiados.”  
  
“They’re a _loud_ handful,” Victoria said, coming in from the kitchen. “No need to take risks. This will blow over. We’ll stand around you until it does.”  
  
Dante whined again, and Imelda bent down to kiss his forehead and scratch behind his ears, which made him give his best grin, and close his eyes in sleepy happiness. This was another thing. Dante shouldn’t be sick. In all her years here, she had never seen an alebrije fade or sicken or even age, and by alebrije standards, Dante ought to still be a puppy. But back in March, he’d had a nightmare—or whatever animals had—and run to the door, scratching at it and trying desperately to get out. Imelda had opened the door for him and he’d taken to the sky, but whatever he was looking for wasn’t there and he’d returned with a lost and bewildered look on his face. Ever since, he’d been getting more and more listless and depressed. He would pad around after Héctor without much interest, and he liked to cuddle with Imelda, but he’d stopped flying, and his cheerful bark had been replaced by these pathetic little whines.  
  
She didn’t know what had started it. De la Cruz had put out his book in February, but she didn’t think that could have much of an impact on an alebrije. It hadn’t even really started to affect _her_ until a few months ago, when new arrivals had started talking about Miguel’s musical, and they’d made the connection with de la Cruz’s comments about how awful she was. Imelda wasn’t sure _what_ that connection was—all the news about the show that had trickled down here, sounded like it was a perfectly nice story, about the niñera deciding that a revolution was not a good enough reason to murder children, and what she might have been thinking as she made that decision. It sounded like the sort of story Miguel he might tell simply because he loved and missed them, and it had pleased her greatly when she’d first heard about it. It still did, on the pure level of family pride. She desperately wished she could see it.  
  
But for one reason or another, it had made people start talking about _her_. About the workshop, about the music ban, about her temper. Anyone who’d crossed her in business seemed to be talking about how ruthless she was with money (apparently, saving it wisely and investing it in the buildings around her shop had become “exploiting her less savvy neighbors”). And in that atmosphere, they suddenly started talking about de la Cruz’s absurd thesis that, through his movies, he had healed Héctor’s family, after Imelda had destroyed it. Héctor’s own furious objections on this point hadn’t helped, because of course, people knew how many times she had turned him away after she had crossed the bridge. Clearly, she had him in some sort of thrall. (“It’s called being in love with you,” he’d muttered crossly when the subject had been raised. “I write songs about it.”)  
  
Coco sat down beside her. “Mamá, it really _isn’t_ as many people as it must feel like. People talk to me. They say, ‘This must be so hard on your mother.’ Most people think de la Cruz is playing games.”  
  
“Games.”  
  
“Yes.” She sighed. “Mamá, he was famous for a long time. Much longer than we’ve had to deal with. He knows all the old games, and there will be people in Odiados who know the new ones.”  
  
Imelda ground her teeth. “Maybe I _should_ wander in there. Just for a day or so until Pepita gets back to fly me out. I owe it to him to throw him off of something very high. Twice.”  
  
“Abuelita,” Victoria said, her voice low and warning. “Don’t joke about that.”  
  
The door opened and Héctor came in, the cleaning bucket dangling from his finger bones. “It’s done,” he said, and sat down across from her. “No sign of Pepita?”  
  
“Not yet.”  
  
“We need to—”  
  
She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it, Héctor. Please. Tell me about something else. How is Frida? Have you gotten anything new on the hero twin play?”  
  
Héctor sighed. “I… um…”  
  
“This nonsense has been distracting you?” Imelda balled a fist and slammed it into the side of the chair. “I’m sorry, Héctor.”  
  
He waved it away. “Frida’s fine. And says not to worry. These stupid tempests always blow over. She’s working on a painting about it. I’m not sure how that works. There are knives. She is the blade. And also the hand on the blade. And the person it’s aimed at.”  
  
“Of course she is.”  
  
Héctor took her hands and leaned over, pressing them to his forehead. “I’ll talk to Miguel on Día de Muertos about not airing family laundry.”  
  
“You’ll do no such thing.”  
  
“I won’t?”  
  
“No. From Miguel, it’s love. Everything else is unintended. Don’t make him think he needs to be muzzled.” She pushed a stray hair out of Héctor’s eye. “Besides, this would have happened eventually, the second we ended up in the news. Having good things out there might end up helping.”  
  
He nodded, but still looked frustrated.  
  
“Héctor, don’t be angry. Certainly not at Miguel.”  
  
“I’m not. I just wish the world wasn’t…”  
  
“The world?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
Coco took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I best get to the workshop. If you want proof that this isn’t the whole Land of the Dead turning against you, look at our list of orders. No change. And that means that I’ve got eight uppers to finish today if we’re not going to fall behind. And you’d best do the finishing on Señora Vargas’s boots. You know she’ll ask.”  
  
Imelda nodded gratefully. Héctor, bless him, always wanted to talk things out. Victoria wanted to solve problems. The twins wanted to fume. Julio avoided the issues altogether. But Coco knew her. After so many years of being one another’s first companions, she had to. Coco knew that the only thing that would get her off the subject was getting back to work.  
  
So they did.  
  
All told, the evening in the workshop was pleasant. No one talked about the graffiti, or the glares in the plaza. Héctor played his guitar and tried out some of the new songs on them. Julio and the twins talked about sports. A handful of fútbol players had decided to get back into the game, and the various clubs were wooing them. Julio was holding out for Aluxes to get a player called Casarín, but the twins were Club Cucuy fans, so it was quite the argument, though Imelda, who thought fútbol dull (she preferred boxing, if she had to pick a sport), didn’t really care about the outcome. Victoria suggested that they needed new sports for the Land of the Dead—things that would showcase skeletal athletes better—and they spent the rest of the work shift coming up with ideas. Oscar decided that whatever it was, it really ought to require specialty shoes.  
  
When everyone else had drifted upstairs, Héctor and Imelda sat across her work station from one another. Dante was curled up at Héctor’s feet.  
  
Héctor put his guitar down. “Are you feeling better?”  
  
“I’m all right, Héctor. A lot of people didn’t like me in the land of the living, either. I’m used to this.”  
  
“I just wish I could fix it. I always wish I could fix things. I never can.”  
  
She reached over and took his hand. “Don’t do this, querido. None of this is your fault.”  
  
“No, but I’m your husband. I’m supposed to… I don’t know. Give you a happy world. I’ve never been able to do that.”  
  
“Maybe not. But you make the world we’re stuck with so much better.” She smiled. “I was telling Coco earlier about the guitar shop. You going out and yelling at those men. Do you remember that?”  
  
“I’m sure they were terribly intimidated.”  
  
“I felt very protected, for what it’s worth.”  
  
He smiled. “It’s worth something. Though you never really needed to be rescued, did you?”  
  
“Everyone needs to be rescued sometimes. That’s what we’re all put here to do. To rescue each other when we need it.” She shrugged. “At least that’s what Coco told me once.”  
  
“She did?”  
  
“Yes. She was ten. I was going on and on about how she shouldn’t ever want anyone to rescue her, how she needed to learn to rescue herself. You know… because…”  
  
“Because you couldn’t count on a man?”  
  
Imelda winced. “Well…”  
  
“It’s all right.”  
  
“And she said, ‘Mamá, I don’t want to be so sad.’ And then she gave me the Socorro Rivera theory of rescues. I don’t think she ever wavered from it. And I came around to her way of thinking eventually.”  
  
“When?”  
  
“Oh… about ten years ago.”  
  
He ran a finger along her cheek, then sighed. “I want to rescue you now. Give me a dragon to fight about this. I’ll fight a dragon.”  
  
“And it would be a battle for the ages. But there’s no dragon. Just words.”  
  
“But I’m good with words. That should make it a much more even battle, shouldn’t it?”  
  
“If words were weapons, yours would be Excalibur, mi amor. But it’s not a dragon. It’s a swarm of gnats. You can’t fight a swarm of gnats with Excalibur.” He looked miserable. She leaned over and kissed him. “Come to bed, Héctor. We can have a happy world here, at least.”  
  
He nodded, and they started for their room. Dante raised his head and made the whining sound again.  
  
They looked at each other.  
  
Imelda sighed, and Héctor gave a rueful grin. “Come on, Dante,” he said. “We’ll all just cuddle.”  
  
So they went to bed, and Dante jumped up between them, and they held each other through the Land’s strange and quiet night.  



	3. Chapter 3

_WHERE IS MIGUEL RIVERA?  
from Guess Who?, October 2027  
Composer Miguel Rivera seems to have pulled a vanishing act! After his musical, _La Niñera _, closed after a (planned) short run in Vienna, all signs pointed to a new and exciting European project. There was talk of Paris and Madrid. He had a new semester planned at the Mozarteum, with the possibility of teaching a seminar on the history of ranchera music, and was in talks to record a new album. There were even rumors of another streamed concert.  
  
But this morning, his Salzburg apartment was empty, the drawers rifled, and boxes left half full. There is no evidence of foul play, but local acquaintances say he’d given no indication that he planned to leave, and in fact had plans in town this weekend.  
  
So where is Miguel Rivera? Let’s hope the mystery is solved soon…_  
  
**********  
  
**_Anja Huttmacher_** _  
@anjatanzer  
I certainly hope that Miguel Rivera ( **@miguelzapatero** ) is all right. Nothing for two days, and he’s been upset. Call me if you’re fine, I don’t care about the drama you made. I worry, Knuddelbärchen. You have too much stress in your poor head. I hope you haven’t done anything foolish._  
  
**********  
  
**_Ximena Maravilla_** _  
@ratedximena  
**@miguelzapatero** Call right away. I know you’re fine but don’t drop off the world. Some overdramatic people will jump to stupid conclusions. I’d keep it between us instead of putting it here, but you’re not answering texts or calls. I told Duardo to take your call if I’m on stage._  
  
“I have to ask,” a voice said outside Miguel’s window. “Is this… you know… _the_ Miguel Rivera?” From his bed, Miguel could see the back of a delivery man’s head. He was pushing a dolly stacked with five boxes, all of them badly packed, mostly with the projects Miguel was working on, though one held clothes and another had his smaller instruments. He’d have to see if one of his friends in Salzburg could finish packing up the apartment. Or he’d have to go back. He didn’t want to go back. It would be too easy to find a dozen things he really should finish up and close out.  
  
“Sure,” Abel said. “My cousin from Chiapas. He’s a plumber. He orders things from Austria all the time. I guess they make good pipes there. He must be headed up here to pick them up.”  
  
“I meant… you know…”  
  
“Eeegggh, we have a dozen Miguels in the family. Not like it’s a weird name. Probably a thousand in Oaxaca alone. I can sign for that.”  
  
Miguel smiled faintly and stretched out one arm. His hand brushed something soft and warm on the pillow. Pepita had come in. He scratched behind her ears, and she purred. He decided not to disturb her, at least until the truck had moved on to its next stop.  
  
“I… um… sorry. Guess you get that a lot. Being… well, you know.”  
  
Abel grunted something unintelligible. There was some shuffling, and Miguel heard the boxes as they were shoved up against the wall. A minute later, the truck rumbled away.  
  
There was a knock at the door. “If you’re up,” Abel said, “you can come out now.”  
  
“Thanks,” Miguel called.  
  
“No problem.”  
  
Miguel picked Pepita up and gave her a hearty cuddle, then set her down on the blanket and pulled himself out of bed. His legs were cramped and aching, his arms so tight that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to play today. It had been a while since he’d done six hours on a motorcycle, and that had been after lugging his bags around airports. He was still dressed in his traveling clothes—a white tee shirt and a pair of old jeans. He’d managed to kick off his boots before falling asleep, but that was as far as it had gotten.   
  
He bent and looked into the crooked mirror on the back of his door. He hadn’t shaved for two days—he would do that before he was hounded into it—and the stubble was threatening to become a beard. His hair, which he’d let get nearly down to his shoulders, was a tangled birds’ nest against his neck, puffed out under the line of his helmet.  
  
He probably could have accepted the boxes himself and said it was sure funny that anyone would think _he_ was some kind of celebrity, and the delivery man would have laughed along with it. He checked the clock.  
  
It was afternoon.  
  
Deep into the afternoon.  
  
He ran a comb through his hair as well as he could, put on whatever came out of his bag first, and stuffed his phone into his pocket without thinking about it. Habit. He headed across to the workshop.  
  
“Look who’s up,” Rosa said, lifting her foot from the treadle of the sewing machine. “I was starting to think you were just going to sleep through until tomorrow.”  
  
Abuelita tutted. “I’m sure he’s tired.”  
  
Miguel smiled and rubbed his face. “I’ll… go shave this. And I’ll cut…” He made a gesture at his hair.  
  
“Do as you like,” Abuelita said. “It’s your head, Miguelito.”  
  
“Yeah,” he muttered. “I… well…”  
  
“You can clean yourself up before supper,” Mamá said.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
Papá frowned. “Let it wait, Miguel. Have a seat. Talk.”  
  
“Okay.” Miguel sat down on a rickety old stool behind Rosa’s workspace. Beside her, Alejo was cutting the vamp for a pair of wingtips. She was looking over his shoulder every now and then. “He’s an apprentice!” Miguel guessed. “Right?” He smiled at Alejo. “You’re apprenticing.”  
  
“Yes. Picking up a useful and marketable skill. But I don’t think I’ll be using it to move on anymore.”  
  
“You better not,” Rosa joked, poking him in the ribs.  
  
“But that was the original plan? He was an apprentice first?”  
  
Rosa blinked, confused, then said. “Oh! That’s right! I… Sorry, I thought I told you.”  
  
Miguel shook his head. “One minute, you were going to be single for the next twenty years, then the next, I hear you’re engaged.”  
  
“Oops.” She smiled. “You remember Denny Calles?”  
  
“Vaguely,” Miguel said dryly. Calles was a detective that he and Papá had hired to find Papá Héctor, and Miguel had remained in close touch with him ever since. He’d had dinner at Denny’s place at least once a month while he was at the Conservatory.  
  
“Well, this woman up in the capital—a Salvadoran woman—said she thought her sister got mixed up with a coyote, and she sent Denny down to get her out. Turns out she was right. This guy had thirty people packed into the back of a truck with no water and barely any air and he was headed for the border. Denny… well, he’s not known for restraint.”  
  
“Yanked him out of the driver’s seat and threw him ten feet,” Alejo said. “And grabbed a gun to keep him down while he got us all out.”  
  
“Alejo was trying to get his little cousins out of the trouble zone,” Rosa explained. “And there was nothing to go back to. And it’s a lot easier to come up into Mexico if you have a marketable skill. Denny noticed that Alejo had made bags out of an old leather coat with nothing but a knife and some handmade lacing, and they were holding up, so he called us. Asked if we needed an apprentice. I came down to get one. Came back minus one heart.” She fluttered her hand over her chest. “Of course it took him three months to notice.”  
  
“I noticed, but I couldn’t dare to believe.” He made an exaggerated gesture of obeisance.  
  
“Anyway, they’re staying.”  
  
“My primos are in school now,” Alejo said. “They should be home with Teto and Coco.”  
  
“You live here, then?” Miguel guessed.  
  
“Of course not!” Abuelita said.  
  
Rosa grinned. “This is still the Rivera house, Miguel. Living here waits for weddings. Alejo and the kids live in an apartment down the block.”  
  
“Oh. How old are—”  
  
To his utter annoyance, his phone rang. It was his agent’s ringtone.  
  
Miguel picked it up, saw about a hundred text messages (they looked too exhausting to read) and thirty-six missed calls. He rejected the call. It rang again.   
  
“Get it,” Papá said.  
  
He stalked out of the workshop. “What is it, Hugo?”  
  
“Where in the hell are you?” Hugo bellowed. “I’ve been getting calls from Austria all day. It’s in the damned paper. Miguel Rivera disappears without a trace.”  
  
“I came home. I told you I was going to after _La Niñera_ closed.”  
  
“You’ve been telling me that for months. A little heads up on when it’s actually happening would be good. Do you know Anja’s been online speculating that you’ve jumped in the river or something?”  
  
“Anja will probably think this is worse.”  
  
“No doubt.” He made a hissing sound, and Miguel heard him shoving things around, probably clearing the space by his computer. “Tell me something to put on your media. Anything.”  
  
“What’s to tell? I came home.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I missed my family. Why is this news?”  
  
“Maybe it wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t vanished into thin air two days ago.”  
  
“A crowded airplane isn’t thin air. It’s pretty thick air. I was wandering de Gaulle for three hours waiting for my flight. I left a paper trail, and I promise that someone somewhere took a picture, or auctioned off the toothpick from my sandwich.”  
  
“Because _that’s_ going to be more interesting than what your exes are speculating about.”  
  
“Exes? Plural? Ximena’s in on this, too?”   
  
“Only to post that she hopes you’re okay, and how she hadn’t known how upset you were. Her husband offered to start a search party.”  
  
Miguel briefly wondered if they’d found their way all the way to Bridget Shaughnessy yet—she was the only other ex with any longevity—but decided they probably wouldn’t have. A pop star and a socialite ballerina (of minor nobility) were news. An FBI trainee he’d dated in high school was no one. Too bad. She’d have thought to check flight records and customs. “Please tell me they don’t have the police on it.”  
  
“Not that I see. I’d guess the police would have taken one look at the apartment and guessed you did a runner all on your own. That hasn’t stopped people from coming up with crazy theories.”  
  
“Okay, fine. Proof of life.” He held the phone up and snapped a picture to send. “Just have Antonella post it and apologize to people for worrying them.”  
  
“Oh, hell, no. You think they can’t tell when it’s not really you posting? You made this mess. _You_ post about it. Or at least send a real, actual post to Toni to put up, if you don’t want to log in. She can handle the replies. They’ll probably want an int—”  
  
“No. I’m on vacation.”  
  
“You’re supposed to go to Milan for a new suit.”  
  
“I don’t need a new suit.”  
  
“And you were going to pitch another show.”  
  
“It’s not done, anyway. And I think I’d rather launch it here if I really do it.”  
  
He sighed. “How long?”  
  
“Indefinite. Maybe retirement.”  
  
Hugo was quiet for a long time. Finally he said, “Don’t joke. You’re giving me a heart attack. I have a mortgage, and it needs my fifteen percent.”  
  
Miguel put a hand on his head. “Okay. I don’t know how long, though. I need to be here.”  
  
“I could say you’re in rehab. It’s much more glamorous, and with that picture, people will believe it.”  
  
“Hugo.”  
  
“All right. Fine. But someone’s going to say that, anyway. Do you want Toni to clap back when they do?”  
  
“No. Leave it be. There’s no arguing with the gnats.”  
  
“What did you say?”  
  
Miguel held his hair back away from his face with one hand, and closed his eyes. “I don’t know. Gnats. Rumors. I don’t know what I mean. I just don’t want to engage, okay? I just want to be—”  
  
“Left alone?”  
  
“Not alone. With my family.”  
  
“Is everything okay there?”  
  
“Everything’s fine. Can I hang up?”  
  
“Okay. But you’re killing me here.”  
  
Hugo cut off the call. Miguel took a deep breath and opened his eyes.  
  
Ángel was standing a few feet away, sucking his thumb.  
  
Miguel smiled. “Hey, Ángelito, I—”  
  
Ángel screamed and ran into the workshop. A moment later, Miguel heard Alejo say, “Oh, pobrecito, what’s wrong?”  
  
Ángel just kept crying.  
  
Miguel stood in the shadows, breathing shallowly.   
  
_Don’t be dramatic. Of course Ángel doesn’t remember you. He wasn’t even two when you left. All you’ve been is someone on a screen that everyone else rushed to talk to. It’s not… you can’t…_  
  
He squeezed his eyes shut, refusing to cry. This was his own fault. He didn’t deserve tears. He didn’t know how long he stayed that way.  
  
There was a rattle of keys in the gate by the well, and he opened his eyes to find Coco, Teto, the twins, and two children he’d never seen before running in, all in school uniforms and carrying books. Coco had a guitar strapped over her back and Benny was carrying a trumpet. Manny rushed the little ones through and slammed the gate… but not before Miguel noticed about twenty people outside, most with their phones pointed in his direction as they yelled, “MIGUEL!!!!”  
  
Coco made a gesture at the closed gate that Miguel was fairly sure Mamá wouldn’t approve of, then grabbed Teto and pulled him over. “See? Told you it wasn’t a dream.” She flung herself into Miguel’s arms again, and he hugged her, then reached for Teto, afraid that he’d be met with another scream (Teto had only been four when he’d left). Instead, he got a huge grin, and an even huger hug. Teto was missing a tooth (to Miguel’s amusement, it was the same one Papá Héctor had been missing), and his hands were sticky from the candy he’d undoubtedly picked up from Papá Isidro at the church.  
  
“Good day at school?” Miguel asked.  
  
“It’s the same as always,” Coco said. “I wanted to stay home, but Mamá said you’d probably sleep all day anyway.”  
  
“I just got up.”  
  
She wrinkled her nose.  
  
Mamá came out of the workshop, carrying Ángel on her hip. “See, Ángelito? It’s just your big brother. You know Miguel. You talk to him.”  
  
Ángel buried his face in Mamá’s neck. She gave Miguel a pained smile. “I’m sorry. He’ll remember. Or he’ll get to know—”  
  
“It’s my fault,” Miguel said.  
  
“He thinks you live in the computer,” Teto said. “I _told_ him you were real.”  
  
Manny snorted. “He probably figures if you came out of the computer, La Chupacabra is next.”  
  
“It’s a stupid cartoon that Teto watches,” Coco explained. “He’s not supposed to watch it with the baby, because he’s scared of it. And Ángelito doesn’t think Miguel is a chupacabra.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Benny said. “The look is…” He waved at Miguel’s head. “And the smell isn’t much better, primo.”  
  
Miguel looked at Coco, who wrinkled her nose and nodded.  
  
“Okay. I’m offending my nearest and dearest. I’ll clean up.”  
  
“You should keep the beard, though,” Manny suggested. “It looks cool.”  
  
“You think so?”  
  
“Yeah. Just, you know… your hair looks like a colibrí nest.”  
  
Miguel gave Coco a kiss, ruffled Teto’s hair, and made an effort to smile at Ángel (at least it wasn’t met with a heartfelt scream this time), then went to the bathroom to actually clean up. The shower got rid of some of the aches and pains as it washed the last of Europe off his skin. It took a while to really get his hair in order, but he finally managed it. He could cut it later. For now, he found an old leather clip and pulled it back at the nape of his neck like Papá Isidro did. After some consideration of the stubble, he decided that Manny was right. And besides, since he was usually clean-shaven, it might help him blend in outside the walls. He cleaned it as well as he could with soap and water, and patted it dry. His eyes still looked a little sunken and he was still a little sore, but he decided this would do for now. He could at least pass for the Miguel he was supposed to be in this house.  
  
When he came back to the courtyard, they’d pushed a second table out, and everyone was sitting down to snacks, which—depending on how busy the workshop was—would probably phase into an early dinner. It looked like Alejo and his little cousins (at least that’s who Miguel guessed the unknown children were) had gone home. Two cribs had been set in the shade of the kitchen, and Miguel supposed that they held Abel’s children, though he could only see one pudgy hand grasping a blanket from here.  
  
Miguel sat down between Coco and Rosa. Across the table, Benny gave him a once-over, then a nod of approval. Tío Berto was scanning the news on his tablet.  
  
“You made quite a mess in Austria,” he said.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Though I can’t tell if they’re looking for you or the menu from a cheap restaurant.”  
  
“Oh, what am I today? Churro? Tamale? Jalapeño?”  
  
“Mushy pile of refritos,” Manny suggested. “Looks like caquitas and gives you gas.”  
  
Miguel flicked a grape at him.  
  
“They never say chocolate,” Serafina griped. “You’d think they’d get to chocolate.”  
  
“You’ve been in Austria so long, maybe you should be Weiner schnitzel,” Tía Gloria suggested.  
  
“Did anyone ever call Elvis Presley a donut?” Rosa asked. “Or a peanut butter sandwich? And was Paul McCartney a yummy bread pudding?”  
  
“Never name someone you like after English food,” Miguel said.   
  
This got a laugh, but it wasn’t the most comfortable one he’d ever heard. He knew what they were getting at: Outside of Mexico, he couldn’t escape people making every Mexican reference they knew… which was mostly food, maracas, sombreros, and serapes. And mariachis, but at least that was fair; Miguel _was_ a mariachi, and he wasn’t ashamed of it. They didn’t mean any harm (exactly), but it was annoying. In Mexico City, he’d found himself treated as a Oaxacan yokel. At home, he hoped he could just be Miguel.  
  
Whoever that was these days.  
  
Teto reached across Coco’s plate and grabbed a fistful of grapes. “I’d be grapes,” he decided. “If I were a food.”  
  
“I wouldn’t,” Abel said.  
  
“Apples?” Teto considered it. “Once, Miguel and I had a fight with a monster, and we threw golden apples at it.”  
  
Rosa opened her mouth to explain, but Miguel didn’t need it. He’d been an only child, and his imaginary friend had been a character on a television screen. At least he could be better than de la Cruz. “You know, Teto,” he said. “I ran into a witch in Austria. She took a lot of my memories and wrapped them up in lace and threw them in a spider web. You may have to tell me about some of our adventures.”  
  
He grinned. “I think she got me, too. I don’t remember any of the things we did in Australia. Could you tell me about Australia and Mozart?”  
  
Tía Gloria started to correct him.  
  
Miguel winked at her. “Well,” he said. “Do you remember when we met Wolfgang?”  
  
“No. That’s in the spider web.”  
  
“Well, we were… we were in a jeep and we were in the Outback, going to see my friend Ximena and her friend Eduardo. And we met a kangaroo named Köchel…”  
  
The story went in fits and starts at first, and Rosa got a bad case of the belly laughs, falling forward onto the table. At last, Köchel led them to a cave where Mozart was trying to write a concerto for the Spanish guitar, and then Teto “found” his memories in a lace bag under the table, and took over, spinning a story about how the four of them had to go and defeat the witch, so Miguel could have his memories of all their adventures back. During the course of it, Miguel learned that he had super strength, could teleport around the world, and, when he played Papá Héctor’s guitar, he could conjure whatever they needed out of thin air. Coco joined them sometimes, and when she played the guitar, she could make bad guys go away. She could also fly. Teto himself could jump like a kangaroo, and make grown-ups listen to him. He could also learn _every_ instrument, even the ones Miguel didn’t know, and he could sing to make the sun come out and tap dance to make it rain.  
  
“And what can Ángel do?” Miguel asked.  
  
“Nothing. Ángel’s a baby. Babies are boring.”  
  
“Boring would be nice,” Abel said, as little Julio announced that his afternoon nap was over with a hearty wail that woke up his sister. Abel and Serafina ran off to quiet the duet.  
  
Miguel was just settling in when he heard someone call, “Who’s the baby?”  
  
Rosa ground her teeth and stared at the closed gate between the workshop and the old house. Miguel followed her gaze. Someone had an arm stuck underneath, and was snapping pictures on the phone.  
  
“Hey!” Abel shouted. “You! Out! And if pictures of my kids show up online, you’ll be _lucky_ if I just call the police!”  
  
The workshop door opened and Papá came out with the longest awl he could get easily grab, and Mamá swept Ángel behind her skirts.  
  
Miguel sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t… this was… Is this why you changed the locks?” he asked Tío Berto.  
  
“One of them broke in a few months ago. Took pictures all over before we noticed her—busy day in the shop—and shared them before the police could come and confiscate the phone.”  
  
“Someone else tried to cut my hair,” Coco said conversationally. “Just grabbed my braid and went for scissors.”  
  
“ _What?_ Where was this?”  
  
“In the square. I was shining shoes, and they figured out who I was. Now, Papá doesn’t let me shine shoes and I have to have a grown-up when I play the guitar. It’s stupid.”  
  
“Why would they cut your hair?”  
  
“To sell online,” Rosa explained.  
  
“And no one thought to tell me this?”  
  
“We didn’t want you to worry,” Mamá said. “You had enough on your plate.”  
  
“I could have… I don’t know… I could have told Toni to post that I didn’t want people doing that. I could have at least done that.” Miguel sighed. “Are they always there, or is it…?”  
  
“There are more today than usual,” Tía Gloria said.  
  
Miguel squashed the grape in his hand. “I shouldn’t be here. I should stay somewhere else. I shouldn’t… this isn’t…”  
  
“You promised to stay!” Coco said. “You promised, Miguel. You said you’d come home. Everyone else said you wouldn’t, but I said you would, because you promised me, and—”  
  
He took her hand, which was starting to gesticulate broadly, and he squeezed her fingers. “Okay, Coquis. I won’t leave. Not right now. I… I’m just sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”  
  
“Of course you didn’t,” Mamá said, sitting down beside him. She set Ángel on her far side, and he looked at Miguel with guarded curiosity. “And we’re so happy to have you back.”  
  
“Exactly,” Rosa said. “Don’t worry about those”—she glanced at the workshop door, where Abuelita was hobbling out—“about those fans. They’ll get over it and move on.”  
  
Miguel nodded, but the easy familiarity was gone. He was an alien now—one that had brought an invading horde of aliens to the gates of the hacienda. He waited for the conversation to shift, so it wouldn’t be entirely obvious, then excused himself. He wasn’t sure where he meant to go until he found himself at Mamá Coco’s door—the door to what had become the children’s music room.  
  
He went in. The window shutters were closed, so he flipped on a light.  
  
Pepita was waiting for him there, sitting on Mamá Coco’s end table with her tail tucked neatly around her, beside a picture from Mamá Coco’s wedding, showing her with Papá Julio, Mamá Imelda, and the uncles. Unless Miguel was mistaken, there was a little black and white cat on a windowsill in the background. Pepita never seemed to age. Apparently, every time she went back to the Land of the Dead, she reset herself somehow. Now, she watched him sternly. Miguel could almost feel Mamá Imelda’s eyes looking out from the cat’s face.  
  
“Are you here for this?” he asked. “To tell me to take care of this?”  
  
She just continued to stare.  
  
“There’s more?”  
  
Very deliberately, Pepita raised a paw and knocked the wedding picture over. It tottered on the edge of the table, and Miguel had a moment of total recollection—the ofrenda room, the family picture falling, and falling, and…  
  
The wedding picture tottered off the side, and the glass shattered.  
  
Miguel looked at it dully.  
  
“There, too,” he guessed. “I’m costing them, too.”  
  
Pepita jumped over to the windowsill and looked over her shoulder pointedly, then gave him an almost human tilt of the head. He went to her, and she butted her head against his arm and licked his hand. _It’s okay,_ the gesture seemed to say. _But fix it._  
  
He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll… do what I can. I don’t know—this one’s not quite as easy. But I’ll try. Can you tell them I’ll try?”  
  
Pepita pulled her head back, as if to say, _I can’t talk, you idiot._  
  
“You know what I mean,” Miguel said.  
  
Pepita rubbed against him again, then turned to the shuttered window.  
  
Miguel peered between the slats into the alleyway that ran on this side of the house. No crazed fans with cameras.  
  
He pushed the shutter open, and Pepita jumped down. She sauntered a few feet down the alley, sniffed here and there, then fixed her eyes on the shadow beneath an old garbage can.  
  
She walked into it, tail held high, and disappeared.


	4. Chapter 4

_FROM_ NO APOLOGIES: AN AUTOMORTOGRAPHY _  
by Ernesto de la Cruz  
March, 2027  
Shall I tell you more? Where shall I even start? Our shared childhood in Santa Cecilia?  
  
I was the oldest of the three of us—three years older than Imelda, four years older than Héctor. I had some experience of the world. But Imelda felt she would make the world over according to her whims, and God help anyone who got in her way. She plays the doña now, but she grew up fighting in the streets like a common guttersnipe, and the guttersnipe never really went away. She lied and cheated to get the things she wanted, and when she had them, she held them in a vise…_  
  
**********  
  
_ALEBRIJE WARNING  
form Más Alla, October 2027  
Those fortunate enough to have made a connection with a spirit guide are reminded that they are responsible for the behavior of that guide. Despite some voices arguing for their status as free creatures, alebrijes live among us, and we are responsible for seeing to it that they do not create a hostile environment. All those responsible for these creatures are expected to keep them from engaging in aggressive, threatening behavior.   
  
If possible, you should also clean up after your alebrije. The waste has been cited as a public nuisance…_  
  
**********  
  
_RIVERA SHOE WORKSHOP STILL IN BUSINESS  
from Mictlána Economía, October 2027  
While some have reported difficulty in reaching the famous workshop, we are glad to report that it is still conducting business as usual. “It’s the usual,” a tour guide reports. “Buildings move as they’re forgotten, streets shift as people have new needs. But I have a need to point out Rivera Shoes, several times a day, and it’s always there, and I can see them working through the window.” Reached for comment in the Arts District, composer Héctor Rivera concurs. Artist Frida Kahlo, a family friend, says, “Any trouble is caused by you press lunatics. Try leaving them alone, and no one will have trouble getting to their shoes!”_  
  
Héctor had taken Dante out for a walk.  
  
The alebrije had been perkier than he’d been for a while, and Imelda thought his colors might be coming back. But he’d been pawing at the door again when Héctor got home from the studio (where he was learning about film composition from a man called Cortázar), and had nearly leaped out into the street when the door opened. Héctor was so delighted to see the energy that he immediately grabbed a toy he’d made—dog toys were about the extent of his leather working skills—and took him out, only stopping long enough to drop off his guitar in the music room, and leave the day’s songs for her to look at there.   
  
Imelda finished her day’s work, then read the new songs (well, revisions on songs he’d already been working on), but the guitar kept catching her eye. She picked it up curiously. She’d held this spirit version of the guitar—the real one was still in the real world, with the family—on a few occasions, but she hadn’t played it since she’d made the physical one, holed up in the old orphanage and trying to keep the valuable parts she’d bought hidden under a floorboard.   
  
She ran her fingers over the mother-of-pearl inlays. Those had cost her two embroidery jobs and a lot of mending. The wood had been an alteration on an heirloom wedding dress. The gold leaf… that had been difficult. Tatting lace for a rich girl’s quinceañera dress, with tiny beads worked into it. She’d needed to buy decent carving knives too, to make the first tuning pins (she’d later replaced them with metal ones, but Héctor had carried the old ones in his pocket for good luck). Those had been two whole dresses, and they’d been made for de la Cruz’s mother, of all people. Sewing all day at her regular job, plus the extra money for the guitar. Then staying up late in the night, sitting under the window at the orphanage so the moonlight would help balance the shadowy lamplight, carving and polishing and stringing it, all for Héctor, always for Héctor. And he had understood when he saw it, how much of her soul was in it, and he had loved it, loved her for it.  
  
When she’d seen it in de la Cruz’s hands…  
  
She shuddered and forced the memory away. It was back where it belonged now, and her aim was to entirely forget that the beast’s filthy hands had ever touched it.  
  
She had her own guitar now. Miguel had made it for her when he was seventeen, after his tutor (a young man who reminded Imelda irresistibly of Héctor, if of a somewhat less dreamy vintage) had arranged for him to apprentice to a guitar maker over the summer. He’d brought it into the ofrenda room late at night, when everyone else had gone to bed. “I’ve been playing a guitar you made,” he said. “I thought you might like to have one I made. This is the one I’ll take to school with me, and it’s an offering to you, because… well, I’m pretty good at making them, and I guess I get that from you. So when I’m away, we’ll have the same guitar, and I’ll remember that Mamá Imelda expects me to come home.”  
  
He’d held it up to her, but she hadn’t taken her copy of it until he started playing. He seemed to feel it, because he smiled at her.  
  
She took it with some wonder, and not a little bit of fear. She’d never been a particularly strong player, certainly not in Héctor’s league, or even Ernesto’s, and she’d burned her own guitar like a torch in the night when she’d thrown her final apocalyptic tantrum. She was afraid that it would be part of her punishment that she’d never play again, that the gift would dissolve the second she tried to strum it. It hadn’t, and Héctor was trying to teach her again.   
  
It had really been built for Miguel to play, so it was a bit larger than was comfortable for her, but she loved it, and loved that he really had made it in her memory. It was bone colored like Héctor’s, and he’d inlaid the rosette around the sound hole with purple markings like the ones over her eyes, interspersed with stylized marigold petals. He’d decorated the base of the body and the headstock with mirrored “R”s in the style of the shop’s sign, surrounded by a lacing motif, which he’d also embossed onto the leather of the strap. It had a clear, lovely sound.  
  
She reached out and touched it, and reminded herself that Miguel was all right, that he loved her, that the family loved her, and if they forgave her foolishness, it was no one else’s business, no matter how many so-called experts had been writing about her horrifying home.  
  
She started to put the strap over her shoulders, meaning to get some practice in so she could at least keep up with the family, but the evening was broken by the sound of claws hitting the roof.  
  
Pepita was back.  
  
Not bothering to put the guitar down, she ran for the stairs, taking them two at a time as she had when she was a girl. She flung the roof door open just as Pepita raised a giant paw to scratch at it, and barely ducked the sharp claw.  
  
Pepita looked at her, embarrassed.  
  
“It’s all right,” she said. “Mamá is fine. Is everything all right at home?”  
  
Pepita tilted her head in frustration, as she always did when someone asked her a question that needed words to answer it. She raised a paw and breathed onto it. A partial handprint was illuminated there—three long fingers that must have just stroked her foot before she changed size.  
  
“You… got cuddles?” Imelda asked.  
  
Pepita stomped her paws, turned in a circle, then crouched down with her nose to the roof and exhaled over the tiles. Nothing showed up, but Imelda recognized the gesture—it was how she had hunted for Miguel the night he was here. Which would mean…  
  
“Miguel is back?” she guessed.  
  
Pepita let out a small sound, like the beginning of a roar. Imelda took it as a yes, and thought she was on reasonably good grounds. She’d been with Pepita in this world longer than anyone else (she’d been waiting in an alley within days of Imelda’s own arrival, begging for a treat as she always had when she’d been a tiny kitten in the alley behind the shop), and she understood most of the alebrije’s non-verbal communication.  
  
“Oh, that’s wonderful! Maybe that will help Dante, if he can go over.” She frowned, wondering just how the fragile alebrije would make the trip. “Maybe you could help him, if he can’t fly. We should go find him. He’s out walking with Papá.”  
  
Pepita gave an almost human sigh of resignation.  
  
“Oh. I’m sorry. You’re tired. The crossing tires you. You get rest. I’ll find them on my own. They haven’t gone far, I’m sure.” She turned to go.  
  
Something yanked her back.  
  
She looked over her shoulder. Pepita had stepped on the hem of her dress.  
  
“Pepita, really. They aren’t far.”  
  
Pepita gave a low growl.  
  
“All right. You get sleep.” Imelda rolled her eyes. “I’ll go about my business.”  
  
Another growl.  
  
“Pepita, I’m fine.”  
  
Pepita gave her a dubious look, but went to the nest Imelda had built for her long ago and curled up. To reassure her, Imelda went over and stroked her head until she drifted off.  
  
She did give a moment’s thought to the growl, to the claw on her skirt.  
  
But Pepita was over-zealous in her duties sometimes. Héctor and Dante were undoubtedly down the street in the little park past the jeweler’s place, tossing the toy around and having fun. Miguel would know Dante if he came back. Miguel would be able to help him. Maybe all he needed was a veterinarian in the land of the living.  
  
And besides, she was not about to be a prisoner in her own home. She refused.  
  
She put the guitar over her shoulder and went back downstairs.  
  
Julio and Coco were dancing in the living room, and she snuck around them so she wouldn’t disturb them. Victoria and the twins were still in the workshop.  
  
Imelda went out the front door and turned right, toward the jeweler’s. The sun caught on the sparkling gem on his sign, and she covered her eyes, darting a bit further to her right as she walked. She tripped over a cobblestone and found herself facing an alley.  
  
The jeweler’s shop seemed further away than it had been.  
  
She backed away quickly, back into the craftsmen’s plaza.   
  
Carefully, she re-oriented herself to the shop, and to the park beyond, where she could see the roof of the bandstand. She could hear Héctor laughing. She followed the sound.  
  
The park opened up in front of her. Héctor and Dante were playing catch. He raised an arm to wave to her.  
  
She ran ahead. “Pepita’s back,” she said.  
  
He frowned. “And you came without her?”  
  
“Oh, please, Héctor! It’s a block away.”  
  
“Imelda.”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “All right, I almost took a wrong turn, but I didn’t. I know what to do. I can… I don’t need a niñera, Héctor. I know the rules. Don’t wander off and get lost.”  
  
“I’m not sure you can always back off.”  
  
“But I _did_.”  
  
He sighed, then seemed to accept the fact that she was who she was, and smiled. He looked at the bandstand. “And you brought your guitar. Shall we sing?”  
  
“Only if you play it. I’m not quite there yet.”  
  
He was diplomatic enough not to agree with her, but he didn’t argue either—either because he knew she wasn’t good enough for a public performance, or because he knew it was tempting fate to put her in front of a crowd these days. “Let’s let it be. We’ll play with Dante and skip stones in the fountain. We’ll make a date of it.”  
  
“I thought… well, I wondered if it would help Dante to go over to the land of the living.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Miguel is back.”  
  
“And here I was looking forward to another walk to Europe.” Héctor grinned. “You think that would help Dante, though?”  
  
“I do. He’s… well, he’s your alebrije, but I think he’s… I don’t know how to say it.”  
  
“On loan from Miguel?”  
  
“It’s crossed my mind.” She shrugged and crouched to scratch behind Dante’s ears. “Miguel had to make special arrangements for you to visit him last year. Maybe Dante can’t make it.” She kissed his snout. “Do you just miss your Miguelito? Do you? Who’s a good alebrije?”  
  
“Well, he’s not alone. I can’t wait to see him, either.”  
  
“ _You_ got to see him last year. He brought you to his piano test.”  
  
“Yes, but he couldn’t get back to sleep at noon, so we couldn’t share a dream.” He put a hand melodramatically to his chest. “It’s a tragedy, I tell you.”  
  
“Oh, please. The rest of us don’t get to have little dream chats. At least not where the other person is waiting for us and knows what’s going on.”  
  
“But it can be done otherwise?”  
  
“Yes. Little nudges. Hoping they remember something. A sense of what you want to say. It’s not easy, and it’s not clear, and it’s _not_ a conversation. I never knew what Elena was dreaming when I nudged her. But yes, it can be done.”  
  
Héctor sat down on a little gilded bench and scratched behind Dante’s other ear (Dante, for his part, started thumping his back leg in complete ecstasy at the dual attention). “Miguel will be older than I am now. Twenty-two. He’ll have turned twenty-two in March. Almost eight months at an age I never saw. And next year, he’ll be twenty-three.”  
  
“And twenty-four the year after. That’s usually how it works, God willing.”  
  
“I wonder if someday, I’ll just be some kid he remembers knowing once upon a time.”  
  
Imelda took his hand. “I don’t think so. I think he’ll bring you with him. You’ll know what it is to be twenty-two. And twenty-three. And fifty, and a hundred and five.” She squeezed his fingers. “You don’t just share a memory. You share a spirit. Or at least a spirit guide.” She gave Dante a brisk scratch.  
  
Héctor didn’t say anything.  
  
Imelda looked up. He was looking thoughtfully at Dante. “What is it?” she asked.  
  
“I’m not sure. But alebrijes… you’ve gotten used to Pepita as a companion. A ride. A pet. But they’re not. You remember Ernesto’s alebrije.”  
  
“Yes…”  
  
“It was a pet—four pets, really, before they all merged—but in the end… it was his spirit guide. It took him where he had to be, against his will. Dante guided me out of there, because I wasn’t meant to be there. But he guided Miguel first. Miguel was chasing him when he found me. Dante kept bringing us together, because Miguel needed me and I needed him, so Dante could serve both needs at once. But now… he’s just part of the family. Just…”  
  
“What is it, Héctor?”  
  
“I was wondering, mi alma… what if it’s not just that he misses Miguel? What if Miguel _needs_ him, and he hasn’t been able to cross because Miguel hasn’t been at home? What if that’s what’s making him sick?”  
  
“You think Miguel’s in trouble?”  
  
“I don’t know. I haven’t dreamed of him for a while now. Or he hasn’t dreamed of me. I don’t know which way that works. Or if it always will. But maybe _Dante_ knows. Maybe that’s what woke him up that night.”  
  
Imelda thought about the articles she’d read—articles about how Miguel wasn’t coming home, about how it was whispered that there was a rift in the family. Here, it had focused on her, and on her foolishness. But _could_ something be happening in the living world?  
  
“It’s a thought. If he can’t fly, maybe Pepita can help him get back. We could make a sling or something.”  
  
“A sling on a flying alebrije,” Héctor mused. “I never tried that. I thought about it, but I never quite got there.” He shrugged. “Of course, until Dante and Pepita, I never knew an alebrije well enough to ask. At least not a big one.”  
  
“You never had one?”  
  
“No.” He touched her nose arch and grinned. “Not everyone has earned a personal dragon, you know.”  
  
“Oh, I think the bigness is her spirit, not mine.” Imelda leaned into Héctor’s arm. Dante crouched down and took a few shuffling steps under the bench. “When she was just a cat—a little cat—she jumped on a man who was being rude to me. Big man. She clawed at him until he threw her off. She fractured her foot, but she came limping back to keep in the fight.” She smiled. “Coco scooped her up and nursed her back to health.”  
  
“What happened to her in the end?”  
  
“She wandered into the shadows one night when she was old, a few months after Coco’s wedding. She disappeared. I looked for her for weeks.” Imelda shrugged. “Apparently, whatever decides who gets to be a spirit guide chose her. I missed my cat, though. I knew her as soon as I saw her here. She looked like she always wanted to look. So… you know. It’s her dragon-ness.”  
  
“I think you’re kindred spirits.”  
  
Dante growled.  
  
Héctor frowned. “What is it, boy?”  
  
Imelda looked across the park. There was a group of people in the bandstand, and they were pointing at her. Whispering.  
  
Dante let out a volley of sharp barks. His lolling tongue and permanent grin—not to mention his silly, mismatched eyes—made it a bit less threatening that it otherwise might have been.  
  
A patrolling police officer wandered over. “Señor Rivera, would you mind controlling the alebrije?”  
  
“He’s fine,” Héctor said.  
  
“Do you have a leash?”  
  
“He doesn’t have a collar to put it on,” Imelda said. “He’s an alebrije. They’re not pets.”  
  
The officer looked at her sourly. “Señora, I’m aware of your opinions on how free alebrijes should be.”  
  
“What do you mean by that?” Héctor asked.  
  
“We all saw what happened at the Spectacular.” He looked down at Dante. “I’m just saying, your wife is… well…”  
  
Héctor stood up. “Do you have something to say about my wife?” he asked, his voice low.  
  
Imelda tugged on his arm. “Héctor, don’t.”  
  
“Well, at least you keep your husband leashed.”  
  
She let go of Héctor, grabbed her boot from her foot, and swung it at the officer’s head before she had a single thought about the consequences.  
  
His skull went flying across the plaza.  
  
“Hey!” someone shouted. “You can’t do that!”  
  
Someone else—she couldn’t tell who—said, “It’s that Rivera bitch.”  
  
“We’d best vacate,” Héctor said. “Come on, Dante.” He bent and put his hand on Dante’s wing joint to guide him, and reached back with the other for Imelda.  
  
It was too late.  
  
The crowd descended on them, most taking pictures, but many yelling various epithets at Imelda. A girl came out and pawed the air in Héctor’s direction, saying, “I can help you get away! You don’t need to suffer any more!”  
  
Héctor kept his head down, pulling Imelda along with him. But the people were pressing in now as they approached the edge of the park.  
  
Imelda felt herself pulled away.  
  
“IMELDA!” Héctor yelled frantically, but he and Dante were being washed aside in a sea of people. Imelda was pushed back. “IMELDA!”  
  
“Héctor!”  
  
But she was turned around now, pressed against a weaver’s stall. She slipped along its edge.  
  
Into an alley.  
  
“Héctor?” she called.  
  
From frighteningly far away, she heard him call, _”imelda…_ ”  
  
The people blocked the alleyway, none of them looking at her now, though they seemed to be looking _for_ her.  
  
She turned to look for another way out.  
  
When she turned back, the park was gone. The people were gone.  
  
She was alone, and she had no idea where she was.


	5. Chapter 5

**_Miguel Rivera_** _  
@miguelzapatero  
Estoy bien. I’m fine. Mir geht’s gut. Sto bene. Wen nzhac na. I’m sorry for worrying people, but I need time off. Also, please give my family some space. They never chose this game._  
  
**********  
  
_MIGUEL RIVERA: 50% CRUEL (4 encounters)  
from coolorcruel.com  
He’s supposed to be so nice. You ask around in town, and they talk about him playing in the plaza and teaching little kids to play the guitar. Don’t buy this crap. When I went to get an autograph, and just ask for a picture, the family slammed the gate in my face, and the next thing I know, he’s on Twitter telling people to leave him alone._  
  
**********  
  
_PISCES (FEB 19-MAR 20): MIGUEL RIVERA  
from Stars’ Signs  
Only the luckiest girls find a romantic Pisces like dreamy Miguel! Highly empathetic, imaginative, and creative, the Pisces man is a keeper. If you happen to find one, your best bet is to be kind and sympathetic, and to always be loyal and true…_  
  
Miguel dreamed of the Alpine village not far from Anja’s father’s chateau, which they’d visited for his birthday in March. Her mother had been a minor Dutch noble; her father was just extremely wealthy.   
  
“The difference between the Americas and Europe,” she’d said with a sly grin, “is that here, _she’s_ considered the one who married down. He’s just a businessman.”  
  
“And what would a shoemaker’s son be?” Miguel asked.  
  
“An absolute _scandal_ , Mausi,” she’d said, then kissed him and laughed merrily, paying no heed to the villagers around her as they picked up groceries.   
  
But Miguel had noticed them, and in his dream, he suddenly stopped being Miguel Rivera, and he was the grocer, setting out cabbages and watching the obnoxious rich couple, the sneer coming to his face without any bidding, and the young man looked at him, the man who looked so different from the villagers and yet was more like them than the woman in the end. He looked, and their eyes met, and they saw one another’s centuries, and he looked down and then Miguel wasn’t sure who he was, or where he was, only that Anja was leading him down a narrow alley and—  
  
His alarm went off. He’d deliberately set it to the family’s work time; he needed to get his head back in this time zone… and out of what Carlos sometimes called “Musician Standard”: late nights, late mornings, and meals at whatever hours presented themselves, from whatever restaurants would deliver at three in the morning.  
  
He thumped the sound off, but stayed in bed, hand over his eyes. That trip had been the beginning. His twenty-second birthday. He’d woken up thinking, _I’m older than Papá Héctor ever got_. He hadn’t said anything to Anja, who had other plans for the day, but his heart hadn’t been in it. So she had kept talking, and she had driven them to the village of Kreuzchen, making jokes about how non-cosmopolitan it was, and Miguel had been wondering if Papá Héctor would have been in Santa Cecilia for his own twenty-second birthday if he’d lived, and when he’d seen the village… He closed his eyes under his hand.   
  
Kreuzchen hadn’t looked anything like Santa Cecilia. It was a mountain town, full of steep-roofed log houses with flower boxes in the windows (empty in the snowy March). Most of its economy was based around the nearby ski slopes, but it went about its daily business as it always had. The people didn’t have any particularly unifying look, though he saw a good number of blonds and redheads, and yet somehow, they all seemed to belong here, and it made him think of the baker behind the shop, and the mariachis in the square, and the man who ran the tourist kitsch shop, and Papá Isidro, still keeping the grounds at the church, and suddenly, all he’d wanted in the world was to be home. But Anja had kept chattering about how she’d rather be in Bern or even, God help her, Davos (tiny, but people at least _went_ there), and for the first time in the months they’d been dating, he’d thought, _Who is this woman?_  
  
It wasn’t her fault. He’d gone to Europe hoping to meet people who were different from him, and a girl like Anja was very, very different. She knew her way around a dozen worlds he hadn’t known existed, and at parties in the city, she had a sharp and sparkling wit. Had he noticed that her wit could be cruel before that day? And did she even realize it was cruel? He’d met her at a party not unlike the one he’d attended on the far side of the marigold bridge—loud, glitzy, full of beautiful rich people like her. She had fit in there. Was he supposed to be shocked that she thought he did as well? If either of them had worn a false face, it had been Miguel. And he didn’t even remember deciding to put it on, or how long he’d been hiding behind it.   
  
He dragged himself out of bed and pulled on some jeans and a tee shirt, then went out to the kitchen to help Tía Gloria get breakfast.   
  
“You know,” she said, “you can overdo it with domesticity.”  
  
“Not for a while, I can’t. At least not until my brother remembers me.”  
  
She patted his hand. “Don’t worry about it, Miguel. You’re his brother, not his papá. No one is angry at you for leaving. You’re a young man.”  
  
“A young man who’s obviously been away too long.”  
  
“Miguel,” she said with a gentle smile, “get out of my kitchen. I’m trying to cook, and you’re in the way.”  
  
“Oh.” He smiled. “Sorry. I’ll go… be in someone else’s way.”  
  
“Try Papá,” she said. “I think he’s been hoping to trip over you.”  
  
Miguel nodded and vacated the kitchen, not sure where to look for Papá Franco. He found him by the rented motorcycle, crouching down by the engine and poking it with one stubby finger while Abel told him about the make and model. Antonia, wrapped in a colorful woven blanket, was in a sling on Abel’s chest.  
  
“Hey,” Abel said. “We’re just having a look at your bike.”  
  
“It’s rented.”  
  
“You should buy one. You should get one for your papá, too. He talks about the trip you took together all the time.” Papá Franco grinned. “Of course, Quique always wanted to be a biker. His whole room when he was a teenager was covered with pictures of motorcycles. And a big map of the Pan-American Highway.”  
  
“They still haven’t laid down a road in the Darien Gap,” Miguel said. “Papá was very disappointed.”  
  
“These are decent wheels. Can you buy it from the rental place? You could paint it like your guitar, and ride it around town.”  
  
“I think I attract enough attention as it is.”  
  
“Well, then,” Abel said, “you could just get a helmet with a black faceplate. You’ll look like a criminal, but no one will recognize you.” He tickled Antonia’s head and she giggled. “But you’ll need a baby seat.”  
  
“Do you have one?”  
  
“No. Serafina says I can’t take the babies on the bike for some reason. I think they’d like it. What do you think, Antonita? Would you like to ride on Papá’s bike?”  
  
Papá Franco laughed. “I think you could jazz the engine up a little. Give it a little more kick.”  
  
“I didn’t know you liked this stuff.”  
  
He shrugged. “Where do you think you and Quique and Abel get that from? The arty people?” He patted the seat fondly. “No. I’m the motor man. That’s my main job in the shop, but I always liked these better. When your Abuelita was young, she used to love it when I took her out riding.”  
  
Miguel laughed, picturing Mamá Elena in a motorcycle jacket, her chancla strapped over her back like a rifle.  
  
“Why don’t you take me out, Miguelito?”  
  
“On the motorcycle?”  
  
“Yeah. It’s been a while since I’ve been on one of these beasts. I doubt I could handle one on my own anymore.”  
  
“All right,” Miguel said. “Abel, can we borrow an extra helmet?”  
  
Abel tossed over the helmet that was balanced on the back of his bike (despite his talk of wanting to go out, Miguel noticed that both the bike and the helmet were dusty). “Have fun, primo.” He plucked Antonia out of her sling and blew a raspberry into her belly, making her giggle as he walked toward the courtyard.  
  
Miguel led the bike outside the gate while Papá Franco locked it behind them. Apparently, it was early enough that the crazy people weren’t out in force yet. He got Papá Franco situated on the back of the bike, tucking his cane into one of the saddle bags. He briefly considered suggesting that they walk—Papá Franco was eighty-three years old, and a spill on the bike would probably break his bones—but he didn’t do it. They were Papá Franco’s bones to risk, and he’d obviously made this call already. He settled for, “You’re sure?” as he settled in and took the handlebars.  
  
“Are you kidding? Let’s go before Abuelita asks what the hell I’m thinking, though.”  
  
Miguel laughed. “Where do you want to go?”  
  
“Do you know the old orphanage? I like the view from there.”  
  
“Me, too.  I stopped for a second on the way in. Let’s go.”  
  
Miguel got the bike started, and drove it carefully through town, but as they reached the hill, Papá Franco said, “Gun it, mijo! I’m supposed to be the old man around here, not you.”  
  
Miguel sped up the twisting road to the ruins of the orphanage, pulling into the weedy lot that had probably once been a vegetable garden. Now it was a handy vantage point for the view. This was where he’d stopped on his way into town Thursday night.  
  
He leaned the bike over on its stand, then helped Papá Franco off of it. He took off Abel’s helmet. He was smiling broadly. “Thank you, Miguel,” he said. “Abel is worried about broken bones. But you’re a good boy, and you know who’s in charge here.”  
  
“Yes, Papá.”  
  
“It’s a good view here. Santa Cecilia. You can see the whole town, I think.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Come over. Sit.” He pulled his cane out and pointed at the dilapidated building. The front steps were stone, but they led to a wooden porch, long since fallen in, leaving the steps looking out like risers at a concert.   
  
Miguel let Papá Franco determine the pace of their walk. It was leisurely, and he picked a few of the purple flowers that grew here. They were the color of the markings above Mamá Imelda’s eyes. Was this why? If so, what would end up on his own face? The same purple flowers? Marigold petals? Little white snowdrops from Austria? Or the forget-me-nots that grew in such profusion on Bridget’s farm in Minnesota? Or would it just be the world’s most confusing bouquet?  
  
They reached the stairs, and Papá Franco sat down with a sigh, planting his cane between his feet.  
  
Miguel sat beside him, and waited for him to speak.  
  
It took a while, but he said, “You’re careful.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“The girls, Miguel.”  
  
“Oh. Yes.”  
  
“And you know where all of them are, and… how to put it delicately…”  
  
“That they didn’t take several months off and appear with small new people in their lives?”  
  
“Something like that.”  
  
“I know. I’m still in touch with them.” Miguel looked closely at Papá Franco, wondering if he was imagining some wild musician’s life, with lines of women seen only once and forgotten the next morning. It _wasn’t_ Miguel’s life, but he couldn’t very well claim that it wasn’t a pretty common one among people he knew. But Papá Franco seemed to accept Miguel’s answer.  
  
“Good. I imagine Quique talked to you about that.”  
  
“Among other things.”  
  
Papá Franco nodded, and looked over the town for a while longer. “This place,” he said. “It’s full of memories. Your Mamá Imelda and the twins grew up here.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“And my father, too. All of them named for the same priest. The one who built it. He died young, you know, Father Rivera. I think the custom of naming the orphans for him came out of grief. That’s what Papá thought, anyway.”  
  
“And _all_ of the orphans got the name.”  
  
“Just the ones whose names they didn’t know. Foundlings. War orphans. My papá—your Papá Francisco—was a war orphan. They found him in Morelos, in the ruins of a Zapatista camp, but there was no room there. There was a boy from Santa Cecilia—another orphan, another Rivera of some sort I think—and he said that the orphanage here could take the baby. That’s all Papá ever knew about where he came from. But he grew up here. Sometimes, the sisters could help. Sometimes they couldn’t. But your Mamá Imelda always helped. She brought shoes and food. And Papá said that if the roof was leaking, she’d bring old wood or leather and get out her hammer to help. I admit, when I first went to the shop, I was curious to meet her.”  
  
“I’m sorry… I never asked for that story.” Miguel sighed. He’d tried very hard to learn every family story over the years, but somehow, quiet Papá Franco’s life had never made it to the top of the list.  
  
“You know more stories than most young men your age. There’s no shame in not knowing all of them.” He tapped his cane a few times. “I think that’s what I want to talk to you about. How much all of this matters to you.” He waved the cane out over the town.  
  
“Of course it matters.”  
  
“Oh, I know. Miguel, you think you’re being subtle, but… you disappeared from a good school. You left a huge mess back in Europe just to come back here, and I don’t think you’re just visiting for Día de Muertos next week.” He shook his head. “You rode a motorcycle here from the capital after hours on a plane. You dropped everything. Do you want to tell me what’s really going on with you? Because you needed to come home. Why?”  
  
“It’s not enough to miss the family?”  
  
“Not with that dramatic an exit.”  
  
“I don’t know.” Miguel held up a hand before Papá Franco could answer. “I’m not blowing off the question. I really don’t know. I just needed… this. All of it. My sister. My brothers. You and Abuelita. Mamá and Papá. Everything.”  
  
Papá Franco nodded. “And yet, of the three women you’ve been serious with”—he looked up to check his math, and Miguel nodded—“two are foreigners, and the third is a city girl.”  
  
“Does it matter?”  
  
“Not to me. If you want to marry the daughter of the Emperor of Japan and live in a palace in Tokyo, all it means to me is free sushi when I visit.” He glanced at Miguel, apparently catching something in his expression that made him laugh. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going to start playing matchmaker. All I’m saying is that for us, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t stay at home. We have computers. I’m actually pretty good with them. I can call you every day, if I have a mind to, even if you decide that you have to marry a girl from Tahiti or the French Riviera. And it would make for nice vacations in my sunset years. I’m enjoying Rosa’s fiancé. Who knew Salvadorans made such good food?”  
  
“Then…”  
  
“It matters to _you_ , mijo.” He fell silent again, but Miguel could see him trying and rejecting different ideas, so he didn’t interrupt. Finally, Papá Franco nodded to himself. “You know you’ll have to sacrifice a lot to come back here.”  
  
“No, I… I can compose anywhere. Maybe _better_ here.”  
  
“But you can’t take a meeting on a moment’s notice. You can’t go to parties where you meet someone who introduces you to someone else who knows someone who wants to produce an opera.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You won’t constantly be seen by people who can open doors for you.”  
  
“I think there are too many open doors already.” He sighed. “And too many locked gates. I don’t want to turn the hacienda into a prison. I never meant to…”  
  
Papá Franco waved this off impatiently. “If you lived here, people would get used to it. It’s Santa Cecilia. People would probably tell tourists that you never came home anymore and that fellow who looks like you is just a distant cousin. And this business started before you left. The museum out front, the whole business with the de la Cruz lawsuit… we got ourselves in the spotlight. It has its perks to go with the annoyance. Shoe orders are through the roof. And you have open doors.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess so.”  
  
“But if you are willing to sacrifice them because this matters to you, then that’s a valid choice, Miguel. No one is forcing you to turn out hit songs every month and rub elbows with the pretty people. We’d welcome you back. But it would be a lot to ask of someone _else_ , who has no connection here. We don’t exactly have a local ballet troupe, or a stadium for concerts.”  
  
“Or an FBI field office.”  
  
“Not that we know of, anyway.”  
  
“If it’s here, it would be the CIA. And I doubt they’d find much to do around here.”  
  
“It’s a different world than it was when Ruth sang her song about ‘whither thou goest.’ It’s a better world, where women have as much say as men. But it’s a whole lot more complicated when you’re looking for a home address.”  
  
“And your point is?”  
  
“That if this is what matters to you in your life—your real life, not just your career—then maybe it would make more sense to meet people here and see if they fit into your professional life, than to meet people in the glittering cities of the world and ask them if they want to come to Oaxaca.”  
  
“Maybe I could go up to San Pedro…”  
  
“Oh, no, they’d never come down to such a bustling metropolis as Santa Cecilia.”  
  
“Right… what was I thinking?” Miguel smiled. “So if people would get so used to me, why the lock change on the gates?”  
  
Papá Franco shrugged. “The girl with the camera who got in didn’t do any harm. But she did make us realize that someone could get in who _might_ , and that’s not on you. There’s a film historian from the capital who’s got a bug in his ear about de la Cruz. Resurrecting his reputation. I think he’s even trying to prove that the bell was dropped deliberately. Personally, my sympathy is limited.”  
  
“I never thought about the bell.”  
  
Papá Franco looked at him. “Do you really want to know what the theories are?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“All right.” He grimaced. “The stage manager for the show always said it was some kind of loose rope. The historian says the stage manager had to have done it deliberately for it to have been such a smooth drop. And apparently, someone from Santa Cecilia visited the stage manager two weeks before the accident. The theory is that she mentioned recognizing the songs.”  
  
“Was it one of us?”  
  
“It was a nun named Teresa. They’re speculating that she did it on Mamá Imelda’s behalf. Which is stupid. I remember the woman—she died not long after Elena and I got married—and Imelda _loathed_ her. Your Mamá Coco liked her, but no one has gotten around to thinking she’d use a nun to put out a hit.”  
  
“But they believe Mamá Imelda would.”  
  
“People have talked about our family affairs.”  
  
“And no one thought to tell me this? Am I still in the family or not?”  
  
“What were you going to do? Berto is looking into a lawsuit, but no one wants to go there. Sooner or later, this has to blow over.”   
  
“Blow over.”  
  
“Yes, blow over. It’s not anything important. Miguel, we can handle these things. When Mamá Imelda was alive, she got into feuds. You know that. We can close ranks. We can handle problems.”  
  
“Sure. Close ranks.”  
  
Papá Franco turned. “Miguelito… you’re angry?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Maybe I shouldn’t have made that a question.”  
  
“Abuelita told me that being in the family meant being here for the family. I wasn’t. And no one asked me to be.” He leaned forward, putting his hands behind his neck and letting his head fall forward, breathing deeply, trying not to do anything he’d regret.  
  
Papá Franco put a hand on his shoulder and gave a little squeeze. “No one was trying to keep it from you. We kept hoping it would go away, and time passed. That’s all.”  
  
Miguel nodded and took deep breaths, controlling his voice as he’d been taught. When he was secure, he sat up and said, “Sorry, Papá Franco. I’m…” But there was no follow up. He didn’t know what he was. That was the problem. “So… sympathy for de la Cruz. And that makes us the bad guys.”  
  
“Mamá Imelda, anyway.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“This historian—I think his name is Varela—has decided that the reason Papá Héctor wasn’t known was his tyrannical wife demanding that he quit his career.  Possibly after deliberately getting pregnant to confuse him. De la Cruz tried to stop him from committing career suicide—”  
  
“By committing actual murder?”  
  
“All they know is what’s in the coroner’s report. What they see is low doses of poison followed by what could have been an accidental large dose. Maybe he got into the stash without knowing it was there.”  
  
“It was still poison.  And why hide the body?”  
  
“I don’t understand how it’s supposed to work. Something about how it was meant to be non-lethal, just to keep him from doing anything foolish. And supposedly, de la Cruz feared abandonment and was heartbroken at the thought of losing his friend. He has evidence from later life showing things like that. And there’s a strict father involved, and maybe the castas are in there somewhere. I’m sure I read something about it. And Papá Héctor was supposedly breaking their contract, so obviously he was in the wrong to try and leave.” He waved a hand and made a disgusted face. “Everyone always wants the new take.”  
  
“I hate this. What else is there?”  
  
“People have talked about… well, about you not being allowed to play music when you were small. An old beau of Tía Victoria’s has talked about how she used to sneak up into the mountains to sing. He’s had psychiatrists going on about the damage. And…”  
  
“And what?”  
  
“And some of it is coming down on your abuela’s head. People call her names sometimes.”  
  
“Really brave people, or really stupid ones?”  
  
Papá Franco grinned. “I’ll go with ‘really stupid.’” He pointed a finger gun and shot into the air. “That’s really why the gates are locked. We should stop by the hardware store and get you some fresh keys while we’re out.”  
  
“You want to take a run down to the city while we’re at it?”  
  
“Nah. They don’t let you drive fast in the city. Back roads to go all around Santa Cecilia and come in from the other side, on the other hand…”  
  
“You got it.” Miguel stood up and dusted off his jeans. He looked at the collapsed porch. “Maybe I’ll buy some lumber while I’m there, and come back and fix this.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because Mamá Imelda used to fix the roof.”  
  
“When there were people living under it.” Papá Franco gave it a look. “I’ll help you. Abel probably will, too. Of course, you’ll need to get permission from the town. They own it. At least for now.”  
  
“They’re selling it?”  
  
“With the music festival, they’ve been talking about a hotel. And with this view…”  
  
“I guess. But I’ll fix it in the meantime. I can do that.”  
  
“Go with God, then.”  
  
They went back to the bike, and Miguel got Papá Franco secured, then took off into the hills much faster than Abuelita would approve of.  
  
Papá Franco hooted with joy.  
  
After a few miles, Miguel started to laugh again.  



	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so apparently, it's also starting to lean on ["The Stage Manager."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17116493) (Sorry, the 'verse is getting fairly large!)

_FROM_ NO APOLOGIES: AN AUTOMORTOGRAPHY _  
by Ernesto de la Cruz  
March, 2027  
I was a young man once, prone to the foolishness that all young men are prone to. Those of you who have been young men, you will remember it with a fond, if embarrassed, smile. Those of you who were young women when we were young men might remember it less fondly, but I assure you, we loved each and every one of you when we said we did. You were all beautiful, all desirable, all the shape of our dearest dreams._  
  
**********  
  
_LOS OLVIDADOS: DELMAR ESSARÁ  
from Más Alla, December, 1970  
Delmar Essará Montez passed into the shadows last night, in the company of his old friend, Ernesto de la Cruz, at the latter's estate. Essará was de la Cruz's manager, and was, in fact, responsible for the accident that took his life, though as de la Cruz said, "That is far in the past, and beyond rectifying. I shall remember Del only with love." He has asked for privacy to mourn the man he called his greatest friend. As a farewell, he dropped Essará's remaining belongings into the cenote on his property..._  
  
**********  
  
_DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS: REMINDERS  
from Más Alla, October 2027  
Día de los Muertos commences in four days. We all look forward to seeing our living families, but remember to follow all precautions. Return before sunrise. Do not attempt to cross if no ofrenda marker has been found—the rules are in place for your protection, not our convenience. If your marker is not photographic, please make your crossing at Xibalba Station rather than one of the photo-ready posts. Remember to have your offerings ready for inspection. If you cannot easily reach a regular checkpoint, you may still cross. Inquire with neighborhood authorities to find your bridge..._  
  
The alley let out into a small, dingy square. Ancient posters were peeling off of crumbling brick walls. Some of them featured de la Cruz Spectaculars from twenty years ago, adhered to the wall after so long. He grinned inanely at Imelda from several angles.  
  
How she had always hated that insipid grin! She had never understood why people were ever charmed by it. It seemed to say, “Yes, peon, I recognize that you exist. Now go about your insignificant business.” Or, when directed at her, more frequently, “Oh, please. Héctor has more important things to worry about than you right now. Get us something to eat and then leave men’s business to men.”  
  
She looked around. Still alone.  
  
She removed her boot from her foot and swung it at the nearest poster, thudding it repeatedly into the wall, tearing it to shreds with the heel.  
  
Once it was obliterated, she didn’t feel any better, and there were still at least three of them staring at her.  
  
She could tear them down. Just claw at them until they went away. It was tempting. It was also ridiculous and juvenile.  
  
No one would see her.  
  
She frowned.  
  
While there were some places in the vast and sprawling city that were _sometimes_ empty, none of them were so far from people that you could make a racket like she just had and not get any response. Someone should have flung open a window to yell at her, or come around a corner to see what the madwoman was doing.  
  
“Hello?” she called.  
  
There was no answer, and the sound fell flat, not reverberating on the stones at all. She tried whistling for Pepita, and the same thing happened. It was as if the walls were made of soft velvet and stuffed with cotton batting.  
  
The first thread of panic started winding through her bones. She supposed it probably should have come before rage at the poster, but she had lived with herself long enough not to be surprised by that. It hadn’t occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to simply call for Pepita from anywhere. The alebrije was her automatic escape hatch.  
  
“Héctor!” she called, without much hope. That sound didn’t travel either. She screamed, “ _Héctor!_ ”  
  
Nothing. Not even an echo. From the wall, de la Cruz smirked at her.  
  
She started toward the center of the alley, realized that she no longer remembered which direction she came from, and forced herself to sit down on a crumbling stone bench that surrounded a non-functional fountain.  
  
_Think,_ she told herself. _You have made it through worse than a wrong turn. If you can sit still… Día de Muertos is in four days. Everyone can cross if a photo is up. Meet the family at the hacienda and they can take you back. Let Héctor and Coco scold you all they like for your foolishness. If you can figure out how to cross and it really is allowed and you don’t do anything stupid._  
  
She was halfway across the little square before she realized she’d stood up.  
  
That might have been the magic of the place, but she thought it more likely that it was her own restless feet. She wasn’t good at sitting still. It had been the hardest part of learning to make shoes—concentrating hard enough to remain at the workbench. That had taken discipline… and a difficult craft that required her full attention.  
  
She would not be able to sit at this fountain for four days.  
  
She closed her eyes and put her hands on her hips, calming herself down. When she opened them again, she started to make notes to herself. The circular fountain was in the center of the square. She was seeing buildings from the back. Were they apartments, with a shared courtyard? Maybe.  
  
There was one long building directly across from her now. That was where the poster she’d destroyed was. There were two narrow buildings beside it, with back staircases leading to…  
  
Backstage doors? She’d seen a few of them in her time, and that’s what they struck her as. What kind of theaters they’d be, she couldn’t tell. There were three more of the narrow buildings on that side, and two wider ones (though not as big as the biggest one) across from them. She turned. Behind her was the back of a stone building with a high steeple she could see from here.  
  
A church. Well, she supposed some of them would have made their way down here as they were demolished by man and nature.  
  
Either way, she’d have to get out of this back alley. But which way to go?  
  
The theater would certainly take her to other people. And she had a guitar. Maybe she could play and someone would be moved to help her. The church was the obvious sanctuary, which made her distrust it. Anything that seemed obvious was probably the wrong move. If she went between the apartment houses (if that’s what they were), who would she find on the other side? Who was living in them? As for the two slightly larger buildings on her right, she had no theories.  
  
The theater. She should go to the theater. If she belonged anywhere, it would be there.  
  
But that was where the warning face of Ernesto de la Cruz was plastered up.  
  
It was an old poster.  
  
That’s all.  
  
And a theater would have good acoustics. She could try calling Pepita again. Maybe she could even get to the roof.  
  
She struck out toward the backstage doors.  
  
“Imelda!”  
  
The flat voice came from a direction she couldn’t identify, even though it wasn’t bouncing off of anything, and shouldn’t be confusing.  
  
She stopped. “Who is it?”  
  
“Imelda, don’t take another step. Just turn around.”  
  
“Who is it?” she asked again.  
  
“Please. Turn around first. Look at me.”  
  
Reluctantly, Imelda turned away from the theater.  
  
The woman coming toward her was dressed in a nun’s habit, with a huge crucifix around her neck. Most of her dark hair was hidden under a wimple, but a shock of bangs fell over her forehead—black, with a few threads of white. Her eyes were as large as they’d been in life, light brown, a shade lighter than her skin had been, back when she’d had skin. They’d been her most striking feature as a young woman, in the days when she’d been Imelda’s friend… and in the years they’d been enemies.  
  
“Teresa,” Imelda said without much enthusiasm.  
  
“Yes.” She held out a hand. “Come with me, Imelda. You don’t want to go that direction.”  
  
“And I want to go in yours?”  
  
“Probably not, but it’s safer.”  
  
Imelda stayed still. “Is this where you try to save my soul again?”  
  
“Only in the most literal of senses.”  
  
“Maybe it’s about ‘moving forward,’ like you told me to do after Héctor disappeared. Do you want _my_ clothes, this time, Teresa? For the poor?”  
  
“I failed you as a friend before. I won’t do it again.”  
  
Imelda felt an urge to apologize—she had, if anything, failed Teresa in a more fundamental way—but it wasn’t an urge that came naturally to her, and it was fighting with the old anger. Teresa had come a year after Héctor vanished, asking for his things and telling Imelda to move on. It had started her final rage, the one that ended with her guitar burning in the night, and seeing Teresa here, holding out her hand as she had that day, it was rising again, battling with her desire to brush the woman away with a quick _Perdoname_. And there was mistrust. A lot of it.  
  
It wasn’t that she thought Teresa meant to lead her astray. Teresa almost always _meant_ well, when she wasn’t being spiteful. It was in execution that her plans tended to go wrong.  
  
“How long have you been here?”  
  
“You know when I came.”  
  
“I mean _here_ , here. In Odiados. And why? I didn’t hate you enough to send you here.”  
  
Teresa smiled faintly. “You’re not there. Not yet. This is a different place. Or close to a different place. This exact spot is… hard to explain. It’s not anywhere. It’s everywhere. You can go a lot of places from here.”  
  
“I want to get home to my family.”  
  
She sighed. “I don’t know the way. But I could get you somewhere safe, Imelda.”  
  
“Don’t tell me. The church.”  
  
“I was thinking about my apartment.” She pointed up at one of the narrow buildings, and now Imelda could see a fire escape ladder scaling it. “Please, Imelda.”  
  
Imelda ground her teeth. “Could you help me get to Santa Cecilia for Día de Muertos, if I haven’t gotten back by then?”  
  
“Yes. Of course.”  
  
“I’ve never seen you there.”  
  
She smiled. “You’ve never looked for me, hermana.”  
  
There was no arguing with that. Imelda had been more than satisfied for Teresa la Perdita to remain lost.  
  
“Go ahead of me,” she said. “So I can keep track of you.”  
  
No other alternatives presented themselves, so Imelda made her way across the square to the ladder Teresa was pointing to, and pulled herself up onto it.  
  
“It’s the top,” Teresa said.  
  
“Of course it is.”  
  
Imelda started climbing. A moment later, she heard Teresa climb on behind her. Their shoes on the metal made little muffled thudding sounds. At the top landing, she pulled herself onto the ledge of the open window, ignoring Teresa’s order to “just go on in” (though she lowered her guitar in before it could get damaged). From here, she could see the whole of the strange little square, but there was no sign of the park she’d come from, where Héctor had been playing with Dante. Then again, it was a city. One neighborhood faded into another neighborhood, and if it wasn’t your own, how was anyone supposed to recognize it?  
  
She let her eyes roam down to a little shrine Teresa had built. She had a picture of the Magdalena, and a picture of a thin man Imelda didn’t recognize (he was riding a horse and playing a guitar), and—  
  
Imelda stood up, but it was too late to turn around. Teresa was already coming up, blocking the ladder.  
  
“Why have you brought me here?” Imelda demanded. “What…?” She gestured at the shrine, where de la Cruz grinned insipidly up at her.  
  
“It’s not what you think,” Teresa said. “It really isn’t.”  
  
“Really? Because it always was before. It was always de la Cruz you sold me out to.”  
  
“Imelda, I’m sorry about… oh, all of it. I shouldn’t have shared… confidences… with Ernesto. I shouldn’t have told him about you and Héctor. I was just angry about… it was a spiteful thing to do and there is no excuse, and I ask forgiveness.” She reached down to the shrine and pulled forward another picture, this one clipped from the Santa Cecilia newspaper. It was from an article about the shoe workshop, and it showed Imelda looking out sternly.  
  
“I would prefer not to be on the same table as that man,” Imelda said.  
  
“It’s people I need forgiveness from.”  
  
“He ruined you, and you’re asking for _his_ forgiveness?” Imelda made a harsh, hissing noise through her teeth. “Teresa, you are without question the most foolish—”  
  
“Imelda, really? I pull you back from Odiados after we haven’t spoken for what, eighty years? And you decide to lecture me instead of dealing with your own problem?”  
  
“I know how to solve my problem. With your generous help in having a place to stay for a few days. I have it under control.”  
  
“Imelda, please go inside.” Teresa nodded toward the window, which was somehow all the way across the fire escape now. Imelda was halfway to the ladder.  
  
She ground her teeth. Unable to think of anything else to do, Imelda went back across, swung her legs over the sill, and landed in Teresa’s apartment. Like her spot in the orphanage, it was painted wildly, with giant flowers on the wall. She had collected enough knickknacks to fill a small shop (including a Miguel bobblehead), and the only truly clear space was a one-person kneeler in front of a statue of Mary.  
  
“It’s small,” Teresa said, coming through the window and closing it behind her, “but I have room for you. Just like you always made room for me when we were children together.” She waved her arm, and Imelda realized that there were two uncomfortable cots in the room. Maybe there had been before, but probably not.  
  
She sat down on one of them. “Can I get word to my family? I don’t want them worrying. Is it possible to get word out of here?”  
  
“It’s possible to get word out of anywhere, in case you didn’t notice by Ernesto’s little publicity stunt.”  
  
“How?”  
  
“People come and go here—”  
  
“Then I can get home!”  
  
“People who aren’t being drawn anywhere else.”  
  
“You can go?”  
  
Teresa thought about it, sitting on her own cot. “I’m not sure. I could for a while. But lately, something’s been pulling at me again. I don’t know why. But I haven’t really tried for years. I belong here in this place. With the people who are trying to make things right.”  
  
“I would think devoting your adult life to”—Imelda waved her hand at the habit—“would be enough of an atonement for making money the way you did.”  
  
“It’s not for that.” She sighed. “I know a woman who comes and goes freely.”  
  
“Who? My niñera? She seems to be everywhere else lately.”  
  
“She does, doesn’t she? I’d really like to see that opera. But no. If she’s here, I’ve never met her.” She went to another window—a larger one that looked out the front of the building toward a bigger (but no less somber) square. A tiny alebrije flew through it. If it had started its life as a living animal, Imelda supposed it had been a dwarf jay, but now its blue body was covered with bright pink spots, and it had the head of an iguana. It landed on Teresa’s kneeler. “This is Checo,” she told Imelda, then stroked the alebrije’s head. “Go find Maribel, all right? She knows where the shop is.”  
  
Checo flew off.  
  
“Maribel? That woman who goes to all of Héctor’s shows?”  
  
“She has her reasons, which are not mine to share, but which you don’t need to worry about.” Teresa looked down at her feet, which were clad in a pair of the sturdy black shoes the convent had ordered from Imelda once a year. “You know Ernesto is doing this to you, don’t you?”  
  
“I assumed as much. Snake.” Imelda looked up. “Did he tell you so?”  
  
“No. Of course not. I doubt he remembers that I exist. He barely remembered me when…” She shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t be talking to him anyway.”  
  
“I thought you wanted his forgiveness.”  
  
“I need it. But he would never give it to me, so it will remain an unfulfilled need, like most things anyone would need Ernesto for.”  
  
“And the other one?”  
  
“It’s too late. He was forgotten years ago. So I just pray for him.”  
  
“Well, get me back home and you can toss my picture over the rail.”  
  
They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes, Teresa’s eyes moving over her walls. Suddenly, she laughed. “Do you remember when I stole paint from the carpenter to make pictures?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You marched me down there and made me agree to do all his mending to pay for it.” She laughed again, though she had certainly not laughed at the time, as Imelda recalled. “You can’t be more than a year older than I am—”  
  
“I could be younger, for all we know.”  
  
“—but there you were, scolding me, trying to keep me from going down all the wrong paths that I went down anyway. And now look at us.”  
  
“Are you enjoying your turn?”  
  
“Yes.” She grinned and Imelda’s look of surprise. “What? I can confess the sin later. For now, I’m thoroughly enjoying committing it.”  
  
“I’m glad to see such a healthy change in your outlook. That philosophy has certainly never gotten you in trouble before.”  
  
There was a knock at the door, and Teresa answered it. Checo flew in ahead of a woman with two long braids and a woven shawl over a red and black skirt. While it was hard to tell on this side of the bridge, Imelda had the idea that she’d been young when she crossed. She wore the colors of the Magonistas—the anarchists who’d come before the Revolution—and Imelda supposed it was possible that she’d died in one of the overblown riots that had come to be called battles. For all she knew, Maribel had burned her parents’ house.  
  
Imelda had seen her many times—she’d appeared in the audience at Héctor’s shows almost as soon as he’d started performing again, and she’d been at every day of de la Cruz’s trial. Why the Magonistas would care was a mystery. Imelda had tried to talk to her several times, only to be met with a bowed head and a whispered, “I can’t talk to you.” Héctor hadn’t even gotten that much; she’d scurried away any time he approached.  
  
This time, she looked up. She had small, dark eyes under her unruly fringe of bangs, and her skull suggested that she’d had a long, narrow face like Héctor’s. Her nose bone jutted out quite far before the point where it would have given way to cartilage.  
  
Imelda frowned. The eyes weren’t right. The eyes were entirely _wrong_ , in fact. But…  
  
_She has her reasons_.  
  
“Maribel,” Teresa said, “Imelda needs your help. Will you help Héctor’s wife?”  
  
“You know I will,” Maribel said coolly, not shifting her eyes from Imelda. She spoke Spanish with an accent Imelda recognized, but couldn’t place. “What do you need?”  
  
“I just need to let Héctor know I’m safe. That I’ll see him on Día de Muertos, and he can get me home. So he doesn’t do anything foolish. Would you be willing to…”  
  
“Of course.” She smiled, a weirdly fanatic grin. “Or I could go to Odiados. I can remember a few things we might do to de la Cruz.”  
  
Teresa cleared her throat.  
  
“I’m sorry, Sister,” Maribel said. “I’ll go.”  
  
“Why don’t you take Checo?” Teresa suggested. “Just in case you need help.”  
  
Maribel looked doubtfully at the alebrije, but nodded. “I can get there in fifteen minutes. I don’t know how long it will take to get back.”  
  
They left. Teresa went to the window and watched them go. “She has a temper. It’s going to get her into trouble eventually. Well, _again_. I guess dying at sixteen counts as trouble.”  
  
“And abandoning an infant in mariachi plaza?”  
  
Teresa didn’t say anything. Nor did she look puzzled or ask, “What do you mean by that?” She just continued watching out the window, not acknowledging the question at all.  
  
At least not directly. Instead, she said, “You’ve always been quick to judge, hermana. And that always gets _you_ in trouble eventually.”  
  
Imelda didn’t answer.  
  
Teresa turned away from the window. “I’ll get supper,” she said. “Will you play your guitar for me?”  
  
“I don’t really play well.”  
  
“I remember you playing well enough.”  
  
“It’s been a while. Héctor’s been trying to teach me again. And the neck is really too wide for my hand, it’s really Miguel’s guitar, and…”  
  
“Well, if you’re afraid…”  
  
Imelda picked up the guitar. “I’ve only made it to three chords,” she said.  
  
“That will qualify you to play rock and roll. I like Chuck Berry.” She looked over her shoulder. “And don’t pretend you don’t know who that is. I know your windows were always open.”  
  
“I know who it is, but I’m not in the mood for it.”  
  
“What are you in the mood for?”  
  
“Bopping you over the head with it.”  
  
Teresa laughed. “You’d break it. Just noodle, like Héctor used to.”  
  
Imelda took a deep breath and put her hand at a C major position. She’d never felt comfortable with no tune in mind, no place to go. She had never been a musical wanderer. She plucked the D string. Then the high E.  
  
Her fingers started to roam over the strings, plucking a simple arpeggio, tapping a beat at the end of it with her thumb. No. It would be better to syncopate, to…  
  
She thought of Héctor in the workshop. Or better, in the orphanage, sitting on a table and playing the old beater he’d been given, the one she had repaired for him over and over. He would sit there in a shaft of sunlight from the broken roof, and he would pluck notes from the air, and she would hum along and the little ones would start requesting the old tunes, like De Colores, and then she found the notes, and for a minute, she was that Imelda again. She hummed along, and she heard Teresa pick it up as she fretted around the tiny stove. It was time travel. Imelda’s eyes were closed now, and she was sure that if she opened them, she would be on the porch at the orphanage, looking out over Santa Cecilia, Héctor beside her and the twins playing catch in the vegetable garden at sunset, all of them washed in a warm, marigold glow.  
  
She didn’t even notice when she began to cry.


	7. Chapter 7

_THE PAIN OF PROHIBITION: THE (NOT SO) SECRET HEARTBREAK OF A TEEN IDOL  
from CeleZone.com, July 2024  
Imagine that you had a gift so big that it could change the face of entertainment, bring new life to tired old worlds, and touch the hearts of millions of people on every continent (yes, even Antarctica, where at least 20 songs have been downloaded at Amundsen-Scott station). Now imagine that you were forbidden from exercising that gift, forced to do free labor in a sweatshop, and told that your dreams were worthless. This was the sad life of Miguel Rivera, before outsiders stepped in to force a change in his family’s traditions…_  
  
_OÍGA: DO WE HAVE TO?  
from Críticas Despiadadas, October 2025  
And here we go. Everyone’s favorite prodigy has hit the big time. After selling mariachi numbers to the metal band Las Lechuzas and dancing around on YouTube in a charro suit, Miguel Rivera has decided that he’s ready to package Mexico for sale to the world…_  
  
“De Colores,” Miguel sang under his breath, for maybe the tenth time today, which had earned him the deep scorn of the twins. “De Colores se visten los campos en la primavera…”  
  
No one seemed to hear him, though the family probably could, as they were scrubbing the gravestones only ten feet away. Only Mamá Imelda’s had really needed it—there had been a nasty word scrawled on it sometime last night—but by giving the littler children the job of cleaning up Tía Victoria’s stone and the twins’ stones, it gave the adults cover to finish scrubbing before they really noticed it.  
  
The Rivera adults with the aid of that nice new assistant groundskeeper, of course, the young man from up in the hills who didn’t speak very good Spanish and kept his hat pulled down over his eyes.  
  
The idea of a disguise had been in Miguel’s head, full-blown, when he’d woken up this morning. He wondered if he’d dreamed of Papá Héctor and the Frida dresses; he didn’t remember it, but something must have set his mind working. He’d been thinking how annoying it would be to have people coming up for autographs while they were cleaning and decorating graves, and the idea had just arrived (along with, for some reason, several verses of “De Colores” that had been stuck in his head all morning).  
  
It didn’t have to be outlandish. It _shouldn’t_ be. People would talk if he went around in a dress with flowers in his hair. A disguise couldn’t be a costume. It would need to be a full story.  
  
He’d woken up Coco and Teto at nine and said, “Do you want to play a game?”  
  
Teto’s wilder ideas had to be tamed, but he was still the one that came up with San Pedro, the little town in the mountains where Mamá’s people had come from (and where the genetics suggested Papá Héctor might have come from as well). Teto wanted him to have stepped down out of the clouds there, like the people in the stories Tía Meche told, but once he got the idea that Miguel wanted to be a regular person, he’d fixated on Clark Kent, and the idea had started to come together. They’d found a pair of the little metal framed reading glasses that Tío Berto used—barely magnifying anything, but looking very scholarly.   
  
Then there was the hair. Coco decided that the clipped back style he’d grabbed at random on the first day was right, and ran to Papá Isidro’s place to borrow a decent clip. (She had come back with the news of the vandalism, though it had been merely, “Papá Isidro says we might want to bring a bucket of soap-water.”) If he did it neatly, it wouldn’t look like the grubby selfie he’d sent Toni to post. Papá Isidro liked the game, and contributed a hat and a poncho that Tia Meche had woven for him, and Miguel found a pair of sandals he’d made himself during his last year of high school that no one could possibly mistake for real Rivera shoes. He looked more than passingly up-country now.   
  
“So, you’ll be, like, Tía Meche’s neighbor’s son,” Coco said. “He never comes down, so that will work, and that’s why Papá Isidro knows you. You can speak Zapoteco, and look confused when someone speaks Spanish!”  
  
“Tourists will pay more attention to Mexicans who don’t know how to speak Spanish,” Miguel said. “But I can do the accent. I think Tía Meche won’t mind if I do. And I’ll speak it with Papá Isidro. He can translate for you two.”  
  
They were delighted with this game (even though Mamá had decided not to risk any more lectures and taught them bilingually from the start), though Teto insisted that the neighbor boy was really adopted after falling out of a raincloud during a storm, and he could call lightning and turn into a jaguar if he wanted to.  
  
“Okay, but that’s our secret. Can you keep it? I’ll lose my superpowers otherwise.”  
  
“I can keep it.”  
  
“What do you think? Shall I keep the face fuzz?” He tickled Coco’s cheek with it.  
  
“Ew! No! But keep your hat down.”  
  
He dutifully shaved. He definitely looked nothing like the recent social media shots now. He checked himself from a few angles. Anyone paying close attention might recognize him, but the hair changed a lot—the bangs he’d had while he was dating Ximena were long grown out, and with his hair pulled back (and his telltale cowlick forcibly yanked down into the clip), he didn’t look like he had for the Netflix concert. Maybe some opera followers would peg him from the photos in Vienna, but he wasn’t wearing a gold-trimmed purple suit this time, and he’d be at the graveyard, not playing in the plaza. The glasses made his nose look different, and the shadows from the hat gave his cheeks a different look.  
  
And so far, miracle of miracles, it was working. He’d arrived early and Papá Isidro, pretending he was hired help, had ordered him (in Zapoteco) to help the Riveras with the graves, since they’d be tourist attractions on Monday. He’d started on the gravestone immediately, biting down his anger and reminding himself that he could erase if it he put in enough work. There’d been a few times people had given him a particularly close look, but Teto was on it, ordering him around and calling him Humberto (which Abel had suggested as a joke).  
  
“De Colores… De Colores son los pajarillos que vienen de afuera…”  
  
“You know,” Rosa whispered at him, kneeling down to start laying out flower arrangements, “you might avoid being caught better if you didn’t actually spend all morning singing.”  
  
“Well, it’s not one of mine,” he whispered. “Everyone knows it. Maybe Humberto just has it stuck in his head from the plaza.”  
  
“Maybe Rosa’s getting it stuck in _hers_ if she hears it again,” Rosa muttered.  
  
He grinned and sang softly, “De Colores… De Colores es el arco iris que vemos lucir…”  
  
“Oh, fine,” she said, and picked up a harmony. “Y por eso los grandes amores… De muchos colores…. Me gustan a mi…”  
  
Alejo picked it up, then Papá caught hold of it (Miguel was still blown away by how good Papá’s voice was when he finally started to sing), and eventually, everyone was singing it, while the twins pretended to writhe in pain on the ground. Alejo’s cousins, Donato and Eloisa, made a show of trying to revive them with a little hip-hop.  
  
While everyone was distracted with this, Papá crouched down beside Miguel and started a row of marigolds. “I feel like this is what it always should have been,” he said. “The family coming here and singing to them.”  
  
“Well, Mamá Imelda probably wouldn’t have liked it for a while.”  
  
“True.” Papá smiled. “But I mean… this is the family we should have been. If…”  
  
“If.”  
  
“Are you feeling better, mijo?”  
  
Miguel nodded. “Yeah. Ángel still isn’t talking to me, but at least…” He jerked his chin at his youngest brother, who was sitting solemnly across Tía Victoria’s grave from them, watching him curiously while sucking his thumb. “Of course, I don’t think I’ll ever compete with Alejo…”  
  
Rosa laughed. “Oh, he’ll like that. My incredibly rich, famous, and talented primo is suffering debilitating jealousy of a shoemaker’s apprentice.”  
  
“He’s not really worried about _that_ , is he? We’ve all been shoemakers’ apprentices. Even me.”  
  
She sighed. “He’s proud of what he’s learning, but I think he feels strange. He can’t get us a new house, and… well, we don’t have any extra rooms at the hacienda right now. We’ll pretty much be moving in with Mamá and Papá.”  
  
“What about the old house?”  
  
“Isn’t that yours? Coco will put you in chains if you try to leave again.”  
  
“Right. I… Right.” Miguel painted on a smile. “Anyway, the jealousy isn’t debilitating,” he said. “But I’m jealous of you, too. You found a good one.”  
  
She smirked. “While you, on the other hand, decided to spend four months… dating… Ernesto de la Cruz in a tutu.”  
  
“Thank you for that image, prima. Which I will now _never_ be able to get out of my head.”  
  
“Any time. I live to serve.”  
  
They worked together for a few minutes, then Rosa caught Donato trying to climb a mausoleum, and ran off to pull him down.  
  
“She shouldn’t have said that,” Papá said.  
  
“Don’t worry about it. It’s Rosa; I know her. Anja was nowhere near as bad as de la Cruz. The highest thing she ever pushed me off of was a stage riser.” Papá raised his eyebrows and Miguel shook his head. “Accident. We were goofing around after a rehearsal. She really wasn’t all bad. Just really… well, she liked the cameras. And the cities, and premieres, and…” He gestured at his disguise. “All the things I’m trying to avoid.”  
  
Papá nodded. “We just noticed that… well, your calls were a little shorter. And less frequent. And occasionally interrupted in German.”  
  
“That was more the show than her. She didn’t care if I called. She just didn’t like it when I talked about visiting, let alone moving back.”  
  
“And she was parading you around on red carpets like a prize dog. Rosa’s words.”  
  
“And I can’t argue with them.”  
  
“But she’s not why you were…”  
  
“No. We broke up in April.”  
  
“And yet, she keeps talking about you like you’re still together. Calling you… I don’t even know how to pronounce it.”  
  
Miguel smiled. “Knuddelbärchen. It means teddy bear. I was also little mouse, smoosh-cheeks, and hedgehog snout. Sometimes Maik.”  
  
“Did ‘Miguel’ come up in conversation?”  
  
“Not very often.”   
  
In fact, Anja had made a huge fuss about how hard it was to pronounce his name right, but she was far from the only one to do so. Long before he’d met her, an agent in London, who he’d met with to arrange for a British label, had surveyed him over a dark beer, not bothered even pretending to try and say his name, and said, “I’ll just call you Mike, I think.” It had confused him, and he’d called Bridget to ask if there was something difficult about his first name in English, since he didn’t think any of the sounds were particularly foreign, and he’d been doing his best with the accent since he’d flown in. It been worth the embarrassment of having people stare at him on the Tube as she swore loudly in Spanish for several minutes. A Spaniard sitting across from him had actually started laughing into his copy of the _Times._  
  
“Maybe you should tell her to stop.”  
  
“I don’t want to humiliate her.” He laughed. “Or, you know, have a conversation with her. She’ll move on to a new teddy bear soon enough. I’m surprised it’s taken this long.”  
  
“Are you happy with your career?”  
  
“Sometimes.” Miguel shrugged and pulled out a few weeds around the stone. “It was good to be able to do _La Niñera._ And I still love the music. The performing. All of it. Even the audience, most of the time.”  
  
“But?”  
  
Miguel ran his fingers over Papá Héctor’s name on the stone. “Papá Héctor told me that de la Cruz was a monkey, performing for strangers. There’ve been a few times over the last couple of years that I’ve been checking for fur.”  
  
“I don’t think you’re a monkey. I think you’re doing very well in a confusing business.” Papá smiled and made an exaggerated gesture at a patch of weeds, jerking his hand slightly to the right to also indicate a group of curious tourists who seemed to be paying attention too closely. “Luisa!” he called to Mamá. “Could you tell him to get those? I’m not sure he knows the difference between flowers and weeds.”  
  
Mamá rolled her eyes, switched to Zapoteco, and told “Humberto” that his costume wasn’t very good if he was going to start caressing gravestones.  
  
“All right, all right,” he said. “I’m just a humble groundskeeper, at your service.”  
  
To keep up the illusion, when the family finished work at lunch time and went back to the hacienda, Miguel stayed with Papá Isidro and helped clean the abandoned graves. He’d wondered sometimes if one of them had belonged to Chicharron, or Tía Chelo, or any of the other lost ones he’d seen in Olvidados. They were probably all gone by now, with no one to pass on their stories, but that didn’t mean they’d never been there. And even if it _didn’t_ do them any good, he tried to remember what he’d seen of them on the other side. At around three, Papá Isidro’s actual assistant, old Mauricio, brought out marigolds and candles donated by the town, and they spent an hour placing at least small arrangements on every unattended stone.  
  
Even de la Cruz’s crypt.  
  
The body was gone. After several attempts at desecration in the early years, his bones had been moved to a new grave on the grounds of the mansion in Mexico City, which was now a museum of musical history. It was much more secure, and Santa Cecilians didn’t need to spend their resources on it. When Miguel had finished school, they’d still been debating about what to do with the building, but while he’d been gone, someone had hit on the idea of making it a kind of community ofrenda.  
  
“Most of the local families put pictures here,” Papá Isidro said when they were alone. “And we put up pictures of people we’ve lost during the year—local people, or actors or writers. And missing people. Just in case.”  
  
Miguel looked around. The place was no longer a sepulcher, and it was filled with vibrant colors and smiling photographs. Where the guitar had once hung, there was a mural that showed the living and the dead embracing and dancing at a great feast. The banner in the sky read, “Te llevo en mi corazón.”  
  
“It’s nice,” he said.  
  
“The children have a spot for their pets.” Papá Isidro pointed at the small corner, where there were pet beds and dog toys and balls of yarn, with pictures of children holding animals held on a shelving unit made to look like a winged alebrije. “I don’t know if that does anything. Did you see animals?”  
  
“Just alebrijes.”  
  
“Well, it makes the children feel like their memories matter, anyway. Most of them don’t remember people they’ve lost yet.”  
  
“Wait, no. There were dogs on the stage. It matters.”  
  
“Your Tía Gloria painted the mural.”  
  
“She did?”  
  
“And the idea was Coco’s. She made the first sketches. There was a competition. She won by a landslide.” He pointed to a spot at the bottom right. “You can see her there on your Papá Héctor’s shoulders.”  
  
Miguel leaned in. They were just part of the crowd, but now that he knew what to look for, he saw Coco’s trenzas and the pink guitar strapped over her back (he had made it himself as a present for her fifth birthday; Carlos had seen it and gotten him an apprenticeship with the best luthier in Mexico City). Papá Héctor was in a set of clothes that Mamá had made for him for the ofrenda, and Tía Gloria had tried to mimic the face paint Miguel had worn a few times. Looking around the crowd, he could see others as well—Mamá Imelda singing at the theater, Oscar and Felipe building some kind of wild contraption (with Manny and Benny helping out), Papá Julio and Mamá Coco dancing with Rosa and Abel. There were a lot of other people from town, too—mayors, adelitas, soldiers, village elders, mariachis. Father Rivera was working on the orphanage. And small enough that most people probably missed them, he saw Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as tourists at the train station, chatting with Tía Gloria herself.  
  
“You’re in there, too,” Papá Isidro said. “Coco wanted you front and center, but Gloria thought you’d like to be just playing for Mamá Imelda.” He pointed to the shadows, where a boy in a red and white hoodie was playing backup.  
  
“It’s good. I like it. I didn’t get a chance to play for her. I gave the guitar to Papá Héctor.”  
  
“I’m sure she’s sung with you many times since,” Papá Isidro said. He went to the door and shut it, ostensibly to sweep behind it, but as soon as it was closed he said, “Cut the crap, Miguel. What in the hell happened in Europe? And don’t lie. I’ll know. So will _they_.” He gestured at the mural.  
  
“I’m not lying. Papá Franco already—”  
  
“—already asked, I know, but there’s a reason God gives you two grandfathers.”  
  
“It was nothing.”  
  
“Miguel—”  
  
“No, I mean, it wasn’t anything in particular. No one robbed me or hurt me. No one even tried to rope me into a bad contract. I didn’t get high and do anything stupid. I didn’t almost die. It’s _nothing_. It was more like… I don’t know. I was out walking and I lost track of where I was and I was in a neighborhood I didn’t know and…”  
  
“…and everything looked sketchy?”  
  
“Not exactly. I don’t know how to… I got lost and…” Miguel sat down on one of the marble benches someone had installed where the bier used to be, in front of the spot where his sister sat happily on Papá Héctor’s shoulders. “Do you ever look at maps?”  
  
“Sure. I love maps.”  
  
“You know how when you look at them, there are big black lines where the borders are? Like it’s really easy to tell when you’re in one place, and not in another one anymore?”  
  
“I think I see where you’re going.”  
  
Miguel took off his hat and pulled the clip out of his hair, letting it fall free around his face. “In the real world, sometimes there are soldiers. Sometimes there’s a big sign. Or, if you’re in the EU, there’s a little sign and the train doesn’t even slow down for it. One minute you’re in Austria, and then look at that, Switzerland. Or Italy. Even here—up north where there’s a river. You can see the river. But the land is the same on both sides. The dust blows across it. The birds don’t care.”  
  
“Very poetic.”  
  
“Yeah. Poetic.” He leaned back. He could see Papá Héctor out of the corner of his eye now, smiling. “But when it’s not places…” He bit his lip. “There were always things I didn’t want to do. People I didn’t want to be. And it looks really easy from a distance, like there’s some big black line on a map, and you think you’ll know for sure and just never cross over, don’t even get a passport. I mean, why would you? I know where all that fame-hound crap leads. I even bought myself a money clip shaped like a bell to remind me if I start thinking it makes me important. There were lines I never wanted to cross.”  
  
“Only there are no lines. Just a no-man’s land.”  
  
“With a few big city-states stuck in the middle of it. And all the sudden, you realize you’re right up at the city wall of the exact place you didn’t want to be and you don’t even remember crossing into the territory. And they’re opening the gate and saying, ‘Hey, come on in, the rest of us are having fun.’ And they’re all like you and it would be so easy to just go through that gate, especially since you can’t remember which direction you came from and…” Miguel rubbed his head. “I told you… it was nothing. I didn’t go in. Not _really_.”  
  
Papá Isidro sat down beside him, but kept looking at the door, his broom resting between his feet. “Did you do something you’re ashamed of, mijo?”  
  
Miguel didn’t answer.  
  
“It’s okay. If you hadn’t, you probably would hold some kind of world record for saintliness at twenty-two.”  
  
“It’s not any of the stupid things,” Miguel said. “I mean, I drank too much sometimes, and I didn’t love…” He sighed. “I did some things I didn’t even want to because I was tired of people telling me I was a prude. But that wasn’t… Abuelo, I really don’t know.”  
  
“Yes, you do.” He tapped the broom on the floor. “You said you’re lost. But you’ve been lost for a while. What made you notice you were at the city gate? What happened the last day you were in Salzburg?”  
  
“Nothing!” Miguel stood up and buried his hands in his hair, tugging it at the roots. “I played the piano. I goofed around with a magazine quiz. I texted Mena in Australia. I had a meeting with a French producer. And then I had a nightmare about the Land of the Dead and the cenote and I swear that’s what made me call the airline.”  
  
“But what made you have the nightmare?”  
  
“I don’t know. Something over there, maybe.” He gestured toward the ofrenda, for lack of a better target. “Papá Franco said that someone’s messing with Mamá Imelda’s memory, and I…” He frowned. “I…”  
  
“You what?”  
  
“I didn’t do anything.”  
  
“And you think you should have. But you didn’t know until yesterday.”  
  
“But I _did._ ” Miguel gave his hair one more good tug, then let it go. “I knew that the story had come out. About the ban. I don’t know who told the press about it. I doubt it was anyone in the family. Maybe they just picked it out of the paper here. You know, the articles when I was missing? They talked about it a little bit. Everyone in town knew, and it was… you know, just a local thing.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“But I never talked about it. I never said it wasn’t… that it wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to anyone, and I knew they were treating it that way. I knew people were writing things like… like I was abused or something. Cinderella and her evil, music forbidding stepmother who was going to force her into making glass slippers. But I kept thinking I shouldn’t engage, that if I did, they’d all say I was… like I had Stockholm Syndrome or something. Which they _would_ , so I don’t know what I _am_ supposed to do.”  
  
“Mm-hmm.”  
  
“What do you think I should do? Or was this just going to be one of those things where you nod until I figure it out?”  
  
“Nodding was the plan. I don’t know, either. Though I’d hoped to nod _wisely_ , like a good village elder.”  
  
“It’s coming along. The broom tapping is a nice touch.”  
  
“Yes, I liked it.”  
  
Miguel sat back down and leaned his head against the wall. “What a mess.” He closed his eyes. “I shouldn’t let them call me a churro, either. Or pretend they can’t learn to say ‘Miguel.’ The whole country must be embarrassed by that.”  
  
“I doubt the whole country is that invested in your image, mijo. And those of us who are… we’re too busy bragging about you to care.”  
  
“Despite the… stupid things?”  
  
“Someday, when you’re old enough, I’ll tell you _my_ stupid things.” Papá Isidro patted his knee. “Come on, mijo. I think we’re cleaned and decorated. Let’s go to the hacienda and have supper with those horrible people who abused you so badly that you throw yourself into their arms at every opportunity. We’ll stop at the bakery for churros on the way.”  
  
“You forgot to call me ‘Mike.’”  
  
Papá Isidro screwed up his face and said, “Mi-ai-que… I could never pronounce that! I’ll just call you Humberto, okay?”  
  
Miguel laughed, and followed his grandfather to the door. They’d gotten partway down the steps, and switched back to a Zapoteco conversation for the benefit of anyone who might be lurking, when Papá Isidro stopped talking.  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
Miguel fell silent and listened. The sound was coming from the row of graves beside the mausoleum, a sort of sad, whimpering series of yelps.  
  
They went around the building.  
  
The xolo dog was sitting in a patch of marigolds, which were undisturbed around him. He was licking at a cut under one shoulder, as if he’d been in the grip of a giant eagle who’d dropped him for some reason and left its prize behind.  
  
Miguel went over to him and held up one loose fist. “Fist bump?” he said.  
  
Weakly, Dante lifted a paw.


	8. Chapter 8

_FROM_ NO APOLOGIES: AN AUTOMORTOGRAPHY _  
by Ernesto de la Cruz  
March, 2027  
Perhaps the world is different now, but when we were young, a man sought a woman who would be his helpmeet, not his keeper. She would take care of his home, while he sought a living—as the old saying was, ‘Men in the street, women at home.’ That may or may not have been right, but it was the way things were. Imelda never would have accepted this, so she found the most unassuming boy she knew, a boy known for being kind-hearted and generous, and began a relentless campaign to keep him under her thumb. I tried to warn him, but by the time he was fifteen, she’d convinced him that he couldn’t live without her…_  
  
**********  
  
_HÉCTOR RIVERA CANCELS APPEARANCES  
from Más Alla, October 29, 2027  
After the disturbance in Craftsmen’s Park, composer Héctor Rivera canceled his planned appearances at Plaza de la Música, citing a need to search for his wife, shoemaker Imelda Rivera, who vanished from the park yesterday afternoon. Asked if he planned to reschedule, he responded, “You will ask my wife that question when I bring her home.”_  
  
  
It took Maribel two full days to get back.  
  
Unlike the family, Teresa didn’t pretend that she wasn’t trying to keep Imelda prisoner in the apartment. “I have one job—keep you in reach until Día de Muertos. You are going to be good and do what I say. Do you understand?”  
  
Imelda had frowned as impressively as she could, but she’d obeyed. She’d even smiled as soon as Teresa had turned her back… she’d once said nearly the same thing to a thirteen year old girl who wanted to walk the streets in a dress cut down nearly to her navel, and had been subjected to an epic adolescent tantrum on the subject.  
  
That first night, they hadn’t bothered sleeping. It wasn’t necessary anymore, and Teresa was worried about sleepwalking. So, once Imelda had finished playing her repertoire (which was pitifully small), they had settled in to a game of conquian, which became several games. Imelda wasn’t sure how many they had played when Teresa asked, “Have you read Ernesto’s book?”  
  
“No. I’ve read about it, but no.”  
  
“It’s insane. I have a copy.”  
  
“You bought a copy?”  
  
“I found it.”  
  
“What does it have about you?”  
  
She snorted. “Nothing. I may as well have not existed. I don’t even know if he remembers that I…” She stopped and surveyed her cards. “I don’t think he remembers me. It’s mostly about you. It pretends to be about Héctor, but it’s about you.”  
  
“He shouldn’t dare write Héctor’s name. Or say it. Or think it. Does he claim that Héctor was just asking for it?”  
  
“Oh, no. He’s much better at this game than _that_. If I hadn’t been there, if I didn’t know the truth, I wouldn’t know how utterly crazy it is.” She shrugged and put down her cards. “He’s not stupid. He knows he has to start where people are. They love Héctor. So we start with little San Héctor of Santa Cecilia. All alone, delicate, naïve, abandoned by Ceci…”  
  
“Ceci makes an appearance?”  
  
“Oh, yes. The second woman to abandon poor, innocent Héctor. He could hardly have said much about the first.”  
  
“The tale could actually be told that way,” Imelda admitted grudgingly. Ceci had lost her sewing studio and her home, and her new landlord hadn’t allowed her to keep the seven-year-old of unknown origin that she’d taken in as an infant. She had taken him to the orphanage when he’d first appeared, apparently—that was why he’d been given the name Rivera—but in the end, she hadn’t been willing to let him go. But she hadn’t been young, and her grown sons had an antipathy to the little stranger who was “eating her out of house and home,” and when the order had come down, she hadn’t particularly fought it. Héctor had told her he could sleep in a bin in Mariachi Plaza and listen to the musicians all night—the mariachis, even the less-than-kind ones, had always doted on him—and all she had done was tell him to make sure he stopped by if he needed to eat. Why she hadn’t marched him straight up to the orphanage was as much a mystery to Imelda now as it ever had been. (Héctor, after she had faded six years ago, said that it had been his choice, but what sort of woman allowed a seven-year-old to make a choice like that?) Still, she _had_ continued to help him over the years, and she’d given Imelda her first sewing jobs, so…  
  
Teresa waited for Imelda to work through all of this, watching with a rather bemused expression. Then she said, “Of _course_ the tale could be told that way. That’s the whole point. Reading it… it’s like looking at people you know from some strange angle, like you’re hanging upside down from a lamppost and looking at them from right under their noses. You know who they are, but—”  
  
“—but you’re more or less looking at caked snot?”  
  
“That sums it up elegantly. I can tell you’ve been married to a poet for a century.”  
  
“I try.”  
  
“Anyway, this poor, beleaguered child had one friend, one boy who was a bit more fortunate, who guided him along and even very generously taught him to read and write.”  
  
“Don’t tell me… he also taught him the guitar.”  
  
“Oh, no. You don’t understand this game at all.”  
  
“Explain it to me.”  
  
Teresa took a deep breath. “Héctor was a prodigy, you see. A creature of almost supernatural talent. The sort of person who should never have been held back by anyone, whose talent should have been a beacon of light to the world, except…”  
  
“Ah. Except that the evil witch cast a spell on him and tried to trap him in Santa Cecilia.”  
  
“Now you’re getting it.”  
  
“And he murdered him as what? An act of true love?”  
  
“It skates up to the edge of saying that.”  
  
“Are you kidding?”  
  
“No. I’m not. You see, Héctor was brainwashed. Only Ernesto knew how badly. He _had_ to do something to keep him from throwing his life away, and it was just tragic that he miscalculated the last dose.”  
  
“And the people swallow this?”  
  
Teresa shrugged. “He wraps it in other things, to explain why his judgment was so poor. His father was cruel, you know—”  
  
“If by ‘cruel,’ you mean ‘occasionally tried to discipline his son’…”  
  
“He _could_ be cruel. That’s not exactly a lie, either. We could find people even now who would remember the belt.”  
  
“So, naturally, that led to poisoning my husband to save him from a life of marriage and fatherhood.”  
  
“Of course. Poor Ernesto was so unloved that he would resort to anything to save the one person on Earth who truly cared about him.”  
  
“Including killing that person, stealing his property, and never mentioning his name again.”  
  
“That would have been too painful. Why, the very fact that he never spoke Héctor’s name again ought to prove how pure his motives were.”  
  
“He _did_ speak Héctor’s name. He slandered it to my face.”  
  
“Which is why people who knew him in Santa Cecilia know the whole thing is completely loco. But not many people are left who knew him in Santa Cecilia, at least well enough to judge it.”  
  
“You know. Why haven’t you said anything?”  
  
Teresa looked down. “I… I’ve always talked too much.”  
  
“They would believe you. You’re a…” Imelda gestured at the habit.  
  
“I’ve said a lot of things over the years, Imelda, and you know better than anyone that what I say doesn’t always lead where I think it will.”  
  
Imelda shook her head. “Don’t you dare tell me that you said something nasty to Ernesto and that’s why he’s on your little shame shrine outside.”  
  
“Not to Ernesto, no.”  
  
And, although Imelda pressed her on it for most of that first night, she hadn’t said whatever it was she thought she’d done.  
  
The second day—three days before Día de Muertos—Imelda stayed in the apartment while Teresa went out to do service in the city. What kind of service it was, Imelda didn’t know—the city provided everything—but she was out for three hours, during which Imelda cleaned everything stem to stern, repaired a spare pair of shoes as well as she could without her tools, and positively did _not_ read de la Cruz’s book, though she found it on the shelf and came very close to being bored enough to open it.  
  
Teresa stopped inside the door as soon as she came in and said, “Imelda! I didn’t invite you to be a maidservant.”  
  
“It seemed more interesting than counting my foot bones.”  
  
“And these were your choices?”  
  
“Well, I did investigate your bookshelf.”  
  
“And found a single book to not read?” Teresa sat down. “Why don’t you relax? I have good ones here, too. The new Elizondo is very exciting.”  
  
“I don’t read much fiction.”  
  
“You should—Oh! Checo!”  
  
Imelda looked over her shoulder in time to see the little alebrije flutter through the window, carrying an envelope. Teresa took it and read the note inside it quickly, then handed it to Imelda.   
  
“For me?”  
  
“No. But I think you should read it.”  
  
_Holy sister,_ Maribel had written, _Héctor insists on coming with me. He is a good and decent man, which makes it very difficult to tell him when he’s doing something foolish, so I will just do as well as I can to mitigate the foolishness. I will guide as well as I can, but many roads may open between here and there, and we may need to travel some of them. I told him this. He said he would walk all the miles of this endless city for his wife. I will try to avoid detours, but we both know that there are paths that must be walked. You know, for the first time in many years, I wonder if there is a song in that. Tell his lady to be safe when we arrive. Her family is worried, but well._  
  
Imelda read it again. _He said he would walk all the miles of this endless city._  
  
“So, you’ll stay put?” Teresa said. “No matter how stir crazy?”  
  
She nodded. “What does she mean about paths?”  
  
“I can’t speak of it, but you seem to know. There are paths that they must eventually walk together. I doubt she’ll go looking for them right now, though.”  
  
Imelda set the note down. Checo fluttered over and sat on her knee and she stroked his head. “I don’t suppose you’ve run across anyone who… might need to walk a path with me?”  
  
Teresa shook her head. “I tried for a while to find _my_ parents. For all I know, they were alive and well and I saw them every day.”  
  
“I doubt it. You can’t look at your child with no expression at all.”  
  
“That’s a lovely thought. But it’s not true.”  
  
“Mine are probably having tea with de la Cruz in Odiados,” Imelda said. “You don’t get burned out of your house… your children don’t need to be saved from shooting by their niñera… if you’re beloved.”  
  
“I was just left with the sisters. Like old clothes that someone didn’t want anymore.”  
  
“We were all cast-offs, Teresa,” Imelda said. “You, me, Héctor, the twins. All of us.”  
  
“Your parents didn’t decide to leave you.”  
  
“No, but their employees decided to _shoot_ me.” She reached across and squeezed Teresa’s hand. “We did all right, though. We made it.”  
  
“Because you kept things together for us.” She sat down. “Stupid as it sounds, I think my happiest times were in that drafty old manse. We should have been miserable.”  
  
“Well, I’ve never been good at doing what I _should_.”  
  
Teresa laughed.  
  
Imelda spent the evening practicing on her guitar, thinking of Miguel and wondering if he could feel her playing it. She was getting more comfortable with it—for one thing, there was no longer any need to build up callouses to press the strings—but she was still frustrated. Singing had always come easily to her, but, while she’d enjoyed playing the guitar, it had always been real work, and now, she felt like she was starting all over again.  
  
After a while, Teresa decided to risk sitting outside on a tiny balcony at the front of the apartment—“It’s too stuffy in here”—and they drank coffee and looked out over a busy, but strangely subdued square surrounding a giant version of Teresa’s Magdalena statue. Checo nuzzled against Teresa’s breastbone, and they spoke of old times and old friends.  
  
Imelda finally decided to try and sleep—Teresa promised to watch over her and make sure she didn’t wander off—and, an hour later, fell into a light dream, in which she and Teresa were girls again.   
  
They had never been the sorts to fall into a friendship naturally, but by strange happenstance, they were the only girls even close to of an age at the orphanage. At thirteen, Teresa had been boy-crazy for two years already, and Imelda had heard a running commentary on which of the local ones were handsome, and which strong, and which simply too amazing to stand in the presence of. She had also had a running list of the ones who were just “not there yet.” These conversations could go on for hours, with Imelda only contributing an occasional eye roll or instruction to get back to the day’s sewing. But on the day she was kicked out of the luthier’s shop, she asked—as unobtrusively as she could—where “that little guitar boy” fit into the scheme of things.  
  
“You and the guitars. That’s not going anywhere. You should worry about something else.”  
  
“Well… I am. I’m worried about that boy. That’s all I’m asking. Is he… does he need help?”  
  
“Which one? Santa Cecilia is crawling with guitar boys.”  
  
“You know… the one who came into the shop all the time. Just to practice, because he didn’t have one. I don’t know where he lives. Or his name.”  
  
“Oh. He’s one of us. Héctor. Rivera, of course. I think they call him Esposito, because his mother left him out in the square to die. But he doesn’t want to live here. He’s fine with the mariachis, and Ceci Lopez feeds him.”  
  
“You know him, then?”  
  
She nodded and sighed. “He sings with Ernesto de la Cruz sometimes. Ernesto takes care of him, too. He even taught him to _read_. He gives Héctor a whole third of the money he makes.”  
  
“A whole… _third_?”  
  
“Ernesto is so generous. And sometimes, he sings songs Héctor wrote and gives him some of the money, even if he wasn’t even in the show.”  
  
“Oh.” Imelda considered carefully whether or not to ask the question that really burned in her mind—whether or not someone like Teresa, who knew boys, thought he was a good one—but in the end, she just said, “I only wondered. He scolded the mariachis for making fun of me.”  
  
Teresa laughed. “Right. Don Quixote de Santa Cecilia. I think he’s still playing at knights and dragons. Are you Dulcinea now?”  
  
“No,” Imelda said. “Don’t be stupid. Get back to work.”  
  
Teresa started sewing again, or maybe she was darning—in the dream, her hands were fuzzy, and Imelda couldn’t tell—but she stopped suddenly and leaned forward. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You’re not Dulcinea! You’re Doña Quixote! You want to slay him a dragon, don’t you?”  
  
“What? No. I’m not… I don’t believe in dragons.”  
  
“To ride into glorious battle with a bit of his shirt tied around your lance…”  
  
“Stop it.”  
  
“To rescue him and sweep him off his feet…”  
  
“Cállate!”   
  
Teresa stopped talking, but the laughter kept bubbling up out of her.  
  
“What _is_ it?” Imelda finally demanded.  
  
“It’s just funny. It’s like wanting to go to war for the court jester.”  
  
Imelda glowered at her. “I don’t want to go to war for anyone. There’s enough war going on right now. Finish your sewing. Señora Delgado will be by to pick that up tomorrow.”  
  
Imelda no longer remembered whether or not Teresa had finished her sewing that night—it had been hit or miss with her, because she allowed herself to get distracted so easily—but the laughter had certainly continued. It had been good-natured then; the spiteful laughter didn’t come until several years later. While Teresa had never stopped considering Imelda’s growing relationship with Héctor anything but the height of hilarity—stern and unforgiving Imelda going soft-eyed for a boy who thought it the height of sophisticated entertainment to put shoes on his hands and walk across the square upside down—she had also always treated their friendship as worthy and important, and had never made a peep when Héctor started bunking in with the boys at the orphanage after he and Imelda spent most of the night on the steps out front, singing and talking and laughing together. She’d just found him an extra blanket and built him a nest between Oscar and a boy named…  
  
What had that boy’s name been? Imelda woke up with that, of all questions, burning in her mind. Had it been Bernardo, like the boy in the musical? Or Rico? She couldn’t even think what it was close to. Maybe Josemi, or Suso. She frowned, scolding herself as she stared across at the wall. It could have been Mickey Mouse for all she remembered, and what did it really matter?  
  
She could hear Teresa moving around in the apartment’s small kitchen, and she could just turn around and ask (Teresa would remember; she was good at names), but the thought of starting another “remember when” session was suddenly deeply oppressive. She didn’t want to _remember_ when. Instead, she wanted to _be_ when. She wanted to be young again, to have Teresa laughing at her crush, to talk to Héctor as the moon set, until he was so tired that he practically collapsed onto the pile of blankets beside whoever-it-was, but she was so elated that she felt like she could fly around the world before she was truly worn out for the day. She wanted to go back to that place, and be in that moment, and smell fresh, warm earth and growing things. She wanted to hold Héctor’s hand, to feel the texture of his skin. His hands had always been a little dry, rough with callouses from the guitar and from other accidents of life on the street, but the roughness had been shallow somehow, like he’d pulled on a very thin glove to mask the softness of his touch. His hands often had a kind of wooden scent from holding the guitar all day, and his nails were always in some state of disrepair, no matter how short he tried to keep them. His fingers were warm when they’d twined through her own, and she could feel his pulse beating beside hers, and even now that they had one another again, neither of them had any warmth to give the other in anything other than a figurative sense, and she didn’t _want_ figurative warmth, she wanted…  
  
The knock was quiet, but it felt loud.  
  
Imelda sat up on her cot while Teresa opened the door.  
  
Héctor started to ask, “Where is—” but then Imelda stood up, and he saw her, and he was across the room in two steps, his ribs crushing against hers, his finger bones burying themselves in her hair. He didn’t kiss her. He just pressed her head against his shoulder and whispered her name over and over. They stayed that way for a long time. If Teresa and Maribel were discomfited by it, neither made a sound about it.  
  
When he finally took a step back (he put his hands on her face and looked at her for a long time), she could see that the other women had gone into the kitchen, busying themselves. Héctor finally said, “You look good. Are you all right?”  
  
She nodded. “A little warm,” she said.  
  
He let his hand fall, then took hers, and turned around. “Thank you, Teresa,” he said. “I… thank you. I’m sorry we took so long.” He frowned at Maribel, and Imelda wondered how much he was seeing. “We ended up wandering through an old revolutionary camp. I didn’t even know it was there. It’s like they’re still at war. Forever. I don’t know why.”  
  
“The same reason the journalists write, and the lawyers have trials and the musicians sing,” Maribel said. “It was their life. I doubt they remember whatever pretext they were fighting for anymore. I barely do.”  
  
“We had to sneak around behind the lines,” Héctor said. “Maribel is very good at it, but… it took too much time. I’m sorry, Imelda.”  
  
“You didn’t need to come,” Teresa said. “I’d have brought her to you.”  
  
“I’m not sure about this plan. The magic of the bridge… I tried to fool it for a century, Imelda. I don’t know if it will work. And if even it does, I’m not going to chain you up in the workshop. You know that won’t work, anyway.”  
  
“I hadn’t really entertained that idea.”  
  
“I was about to go back to that lawyer Ruiz and make him tell me how to get to Odiados. I couldn’t find the way I took before. I was afraid you were there. And if you were, I’d go there with you. I will. If we can’t fix this, I’ll go wherever the roads take you.”  
  
“Let’s not worry about that. We can still fix this.”  
  
He nodded. “Before we left, I sent Dante to Miguel. I had to ask Pepita to carry him. He’s flying again, but not very much.”  
  
“Miguel doesn’t need to do anything. This isn’t his fault.”  
  
“No. But I think he can help, if he’s willing.”  
  
Imelda didn’t like putting any of this on Miguel, who would probably decide it _was_ his fault if it turned out there was anything he could be doing about it. But she didn’t say anything. If the problem was coming from the living, then _someone_ in the living world would need to fix it. Instead, she sighed and said, “How is Pepita going to carry Dante after she turns back into a cat?”


	9. Chapter 9

_ENGLISH TRANSLATION!!!?!?!?!?  
from NineraForever, November 2027  
Oh, my God, I totally love this musical! I heard the soundtrack, and I found where someone recorded it (I would totally buy a legal version if there _was _one, I promise!). I only speak a little Spanish, so I had to run the lyrics through a translator program but it’s TOTALLY AMAZING, but I can’t get it to rhyme or anything in English and nothing fits when I try to sing it. Has anybody made a translation? Didn’t I read that MR can speak English? Has he done one? Everyone should love this show! Seriously, I want to sing “Para Qué Sirve” for my school solo competition, but I don’t think my teacher speaks Spanish, and I bet she’d totally grade me down if she can’t understand it. Besides, I might pronounce something wrong, and that would be completely embarrassing…_  
  
**********  
_RE: ENGLISH TRANSLATION!!!?!?!?!?  
from NineraForever, November 2027  
No one will care if you mispronounce a few words! But I’m bilingual, and I worked on it a little if you really want to do it in English. You can’t get it exact because, like you said—different languages, different rhymes, different rhythms. But I think this gets the gist of it, at least the chorus. I translated it for practice. If you want the rest, message me, okay?  
  
What’s it for? What’s it for?  
What are we leaving for those who come after?  
Hope and forgiveness, or anger and pain?  
The heartbreaking sound of the cold, cruel laughter…  
if that’s all we’re fighting for, what do we gain?_  
  
Miguel didn’t sleep much on Saturday night.  
  
He’d run for Laurita Sanchez, Santa Cecilia’s only resident veterinarian, as soon as he’d realized how deep Dante’s cuts were, and by the time he’d come back, Mauricio had found Pepita hiding in the underbrush, one claw on her hind leg nearly ripped out and the toe dislocated. He’d taken her, and she’d struggled against him, trying to get back, but he wanted to make sure the foot would be all right first.  
  
“It must have been an eagle,” Papá Isidro proposed. “It attacked Dante. And the cat must have tried to attack it.”  
  
“A big eagle,” Sanchez said. “And bold, to attack something as big as a xolo dog.”  
  
But she’d had no other theories, and the one that Miguel considered blindingly obvious was definitely not one he’d share. For some reason, Pepita had carried Dante across the barrier, and had turned back into a cat and lost hold of him while they were still airborne.  
  
He and Papá Isidro had brought both alebrijes back to the hacienda once Sanchez bandaged them up. They’d been able to keep Pepita in her pillow-lined box for six hours before she’d made a break for it. Miguel hoped she was back in the Land of the Dead now, healing before tomorrow’s trip over.  
  
Why she had brought Dante early, he still didn’t know.  
  
He’d spent the night up with the dog, stroking his head and medicating the gashes. They hadn’t hit anything vital, but the skin would need protecting for a good long while. Maybe he’d heal better on the other side, but he seemed to have no interest in making an escape.  
  
He used some of the odd hours to call Salzburg, to close up the lease on his apartment and get a few friends to pack up his remaining belongings and ship them over. Quite to his annoyance, when he called Tobias—a pianist who’d tutored him in German for the first two month at the Mozarteum—he was in the shower, and Anja picked up the phone on his nightstand and proceeded to berate him for five minutes before starting to cry.  
  
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m sorry.”  
  
“I was worried! Everyone was worried. I know you hate me—”  
  
“I don’t hate you.”  
  
“Fine. I know you’re embarrassed by me. I know you regret… well, I know. I do know.”  
  
“I’m not embarrassed,” Miguel said, but didn’t correct her on the regrets. “I shouldn’t have… we shouldn’t have… we weren’t right. We didn’t want the same things. But I am sorry I scared you.”  
  
“You scared _everyone_ , Schmusebacke. Everyone’s been talking about how weird you’d been.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Marcel told me you didn’t go on a single date after we broke up. Leonie said you completely spaced out with that Japanese producer. And Tobias says you hadn’t written a song for three months!”  
  
Dante gave a sharp bark. Miguel reached over and scratched between his ears. Three months. He must have… he hadn’t gone two _weeks_ without writing at least something for…  
  
“Three months?”  
  
“That’s what Tobias says.”  
  
“That can’t be right.”  
  
“Check your notebook if you don’t believe him. Oh, wait. _I_ have your notebook. Tobias grabbed it out of your apartment before anyone else could because _you left your apartment unlocked_. It’s actually been more like five months, unless you’ve got another notebook with you.”  
  
He didn’t. Or if he did, he still hadn’t unpacked it. And he didn’t think he did. “I’ve just been scribbling stuff,” he lied. He was sure he’d at least been writing down _ideas_. But had he written an actual note of anything? He rifled through his memory, but it was a blue hole, a cenote in his mind.  
  
“And that last day—I set up that meeting for you, with the French producer. She’s my friend. She said you barely talked to her at lunch.”  
  
“No, that’s not true. It was a normal meeting. I don’t speak French and she didn’t speak Spanish or German, so we were trying to talk in English… it didn’t work very well. That’s all.”  
  
“She had all sorts of ideas for _La Niñera_ , and you didn’t even listen.”  
  
Miguel rubbed his head, trying to remember the woman’s name, let alone what ideas she’d had for the musical. He remembered something about “the endless cycle of oppression,” which had seemed like a lot to hang on the poor show. And… was there something else? He felt like there was something else. He hadn’t thought about the meeting at all. He’d been too consumed with his dream of the cenote and the nasty sense that he had to get home before he lost everything.  
  
“I’m sorry if I hurt your friend’s feelings,” he said.  
  
“You just get your head on straight, and when you come back, you can talk to her again. I’m sure I can talk her into another meeting. She thinks you’re cute when you’re not being rude.”  
  
“I’m not coming back, An. That’s why I’m getting my things.”  
  
“You can’t be serious. Are you planning to stage your next show in someone’s barn?”  
  
Miguel considered pointing out that he had contacts throughout the musical world of Mexico City, the biggest hub of Spanish-language music in the world (with the possible exception of Buenos Aires; Madrid barely registered). But it wasn’t worth it. For Anja, if it didn’t have a debut in Vienna or Paris or Rome, it was strictly amateur. _Maybe_ New York, though these days, an American showing was considered quite a step down in Europe.  
  
He sighed. “Anja, thank you for helping pack up my things. Tell everyone I’m sorry about… everything.”  
  
She’d tried to keep him on the line, but Tobias had finally come out of the shower and got on to make more practical arrangements.  
  
He hung up, not at all satisfied with the conversation. He finally fell asleep around four, his head on Dante’s pillows, listening to the thud-thud of his heartbeat.  
  
He’d dreamed disjointedly of Papá Héctor and Mamá Imelda, wandering around the city, calling for each other. It was an upsetting dream, so he was glad when Dante nipped him awake at around seven.  
  
Dante was obviously feeling a little bit better, and when Miguel changed his bandages, he saw that the cuts were healing faster than they would on a normal dog. “So what’s going on, amigo?” he asked, spreading ointment on them. “Why couldn’t you fly over yourself?”  
  
Dante’s only answer was a sloppy kiss across Miguel’s nose.  
  
“You think you can eat something?”  
  
This got a fairly enthusiastic response, so Miguel dug under the sink for the stash of dog food the family kept for these visits. The bag was dusty. Dante obviously hadn’t visited while he was away.  
  
“This might be a little stale,” he said. “You want it anyway, or do you want to wait for me to buy new? Or do you just want some eggs? I could make eggs.”  
  
Dante ran to the refrigerator and pawed at it.  
  
Miguel was halfway through cooking some unseasoned scrambled eggs to share when Papá came in. He’d obviously already been up, and was in his work apron. Seven was not “an evil and unholy hour,” as one of Miguel’s musical friends in Austria had put it, at the hacienda.  
  
“How’s Dante?”  
  
“Healing faster than I plan to tell the vet about.”  
  
“Did you get any sleep?”  
  
“A little.”  
  
“Abuelita made some chilaquiles if you want breakfast.”  
  
“This is for Dante. The dog food looked kind of old.”  
  
“He hasn’t come around since you left for school.”  
  
“He doesn’t come around at all? Pepita does.”  
  
Papá shrugged. “Well, Pepita is Mamá Imelda’s guide. She looks after us for her. Dante’s your guide, isn’t he?”  
  
Miguel frowned. “You think he’s here to guide me?”  
  
“You said you were lost. Now your guide is here. Do the math.”  
  
“Hmm.” Miguel finished the eggs and emptied them into Dante’s bowl. “I don’t know if there’s anything to guide me to.”  
  
Dante didn’t offer a suggestion. In the Land of the Dead, Miguel had said that he needed to find his great-great-grandfather, and Dante had promptly led him straight to Papá Héctor (and tried to keep him from de la Cruz). But now, he wasn’t sure what he’d lost, or what he was looking for.  
  
“Maybe you should just see where he leads you.”  
  
“Well, he’s already leading me to the grocery store. These are the last eggs.”  
  
“Take Coco with you. She has a whole list for Día de Muertos. Has Papá Héctor ever told you what his favorite food was?”  
  
“He likes trying new things. I thought I’d cook him something Swiss. I think I packed my fondue pot.”  
  
“You should open your boxes, if you’re home to stay.”  
  
“After the holiday. When there’s time to figure out where to put it all.”  
  
“There’s room in the old house… if you still want it.”  
  
Miguel didn’t answer. He _did_ want the old house, the way he always had. He wanted to be what he’d been, to want what he’d always wanted. And the idea of being here, and safe, with the comfortable sounds of his family around him…  
  
And yet.  
  
Rosa needed a house. Miguel could afford to live anywhere.  
  
The old house was a series of small rooms, none of them big enough to set up the machinery he’d need if he ever meant to make more guitars—Abel and Serafina lived in the rooms he’d used to make Coco’s six years ago.  
  
His career would follow him here, and people would stick their arms under the wall to take pictures.  
  
He was up at all hours practicing when he wasn’t here.  
  
_But it’s_ mine _and I don’t want to lose it._  
  
He thought of bells ringing.  
  
“Miguel?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“Someday, you’ll tell me what ‘nothing’ is an answer to inside your skull.”  
  
“Eggs. Dog food. Coco’s list. What else do we need?”  
  
“We’re all right on the other staples. Maybe pick up some meat for supper?”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
Papá smiled. “Thank you. I’ll get your sister.”  
  
Miguel sat on the floor and patted Dante’s head while he ate. He looked like he’d always looked—a kind of goofy, off-kilter grin on his face, good-natured eyes cocked at Miguel, the little patch of hair on his head sticking straight up. Miguel could imagine him in his other form—bright, neon colors, wings… and still the same expression on his face. It was hard to take him seriously. Just seeing him made Miguel want to laugh and dance and play ridiculous childhood games.  
  
And yet.  
  
Dante had understood when _no one_ else had. Dante had known who he was, who he needed, what had to be done.  
  
“If I’m going to be me,” he said, “I need to… I don’t know. We’ve got to find me, Dante.”  
  
Dante slurped up the last of his eggs and gave Miguel a quizzical look, like _Amigo, you’re sitting right there watching me eat._  
  
Miguel scratched behind his jaw, causing his back leg to thump in a contented rhythm.  
  
Coco ran over from her room, her shopping list in one hand, grinning from ear to ear. “Papá says you’re taking me shopping!”  
  
“That’s the plan.”  
  
“Are you going to be in disguise again? Are you Humberto?”  
  
“No. I’m going to try being Miguel for the day. Just for kicks. Can you handle it if I get recognized?”  
  
“What do I do?”  
  
“Be nice. Don’t offer information. I’ll try and keep them from asking you anything.”  
  
“What kind of information?”  
  
“The kind you’re not going to be talking about.”  
  
“Like your girlfriends?”  
  
“There are none of those at the moment to have information about. And, no, you may not tell anyone that I’m looking for one.”  
  
“Are you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Then why would I say that?”  
  
“I don’t know. Just… let me talk if it happens, okay?”  
  
She shrugged.  
  
“Should I borrow a car, or do you want to walk with the wagon?”  
  
“Walk. Can we take Dante?”  
  
Miguel looked at the dog. “I don’t know. His cuts are better, but maybe… I’m worried about stuff getting under the bandages and…”  
  
But Dante was already up and wagging his tail.  
  
“We could put a shirt over his bandages,” Coco suggested. “Do you have a button shirt? We could tie the bottom.”  
  
Miguel wasn’t sure if it would do any good, but since his real issue was making sure that people didn’t ask about the bandages—explaining how fast the cuts were healing would be problematic—he decided that it seemed like a reasonable idea and went back to his room to grab a shirt. The first one he found that had short sleeves was a Hawaiian shirt with a loud pattern on it. He grinned. He’d bought it a few years ago specifically because it reminded him of Dante in the other world.  
  
Dante was surprisingly compliant with being dressed in a shirt (which Coco tied around his midsection to keep the tails from dragging), and he trotted along beside them happily as they made the rounds, dragging along an old wooden wagon that Miguel remembered fondly from his own childhood errands (and from the early days of shining shoes, before he could carry everything).  
  
The bakery was the first stop—and it would be the last, to get the things they were supposed to get. The first stop was just to get some strawberry coconut pinwheels. A little energy to get them going. Coco grinned around hers as she ate it.  
  
“I’m going to play in the plaza on Tuesday,” she said. “After the holiday. Gezana says I’m good enough now.”  
  
“I think you’ve been good enough for about a year,” Miguel told her.  
  
“Do you want to play with me?”  
  
“No! You want that for yourself.”  
  
“No, I don’t. I want to play with you.”  
  
Miguel tousled her hair as he picked out some eggs at the market. “We’ll play at home. I don’t know if I’m quite ready to wander out into the plaza yet. That’s kind of a big hint that I’m staying.”  
  
Coco looked up, her eyes wide over the onions she had in her hands, and Miguel realized that Rosa was right—Coco would never forgive him if this turned out not to be permanent, which was another thing to keep in mind. He hadn’t meant to bring the subject up at all, let alone to make it sound like he was leaving Mexico again (that was, as far as he was concerned, off the table; if he did leave, it would be for the capital).  
  
“But you _are_ staying,” Coco said. “You’re staying, right?”  
  
“I… probably. I don’t…”  
  
“You said you’d come back to stay. You _promised._ ”  
  
“I want to. That’s why I came back. But… I don’t know if I fit here anymore. Does that make sense?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I’m going to try. I mean, this is where I want to be. This is where I love. It’s where you are. But…”  
  
“You promised.”  
  
“And I’m going to try, but… everything… I don’t know how…”  
  
Dante, the traitor, went to stand by Coco, who noticed it and looked up defiantly. “See? Dante knows.”  
  
“Coquis… I have some things I need to work out. I don’t know how… and is it good for the family for me to be here? I mean…”  
  
As if on cue, a complete stranger—a girl with light brown hair and green eyes, wearing an “Oiga” tee shirt—came up behind Coco, eyes wide and hopeful. “You are Miguel Rivera?” she asked. “I’m name is Madison. I observe your production on Netflix!”  
  
Coco frowned deeply. Miguel gave her a warning look to remind her of what she’d promised to do, and she fell silent.  
  
He switched to English, since that was the most likely tourist language (and the one where the grammar at least made sense) and said, “I’m Miguel. Thank you for watching the show.”  
  
“It was wonderful. I never really listened to Mexican music before—I mean, Tex-mex and everything, but not real—and it was… It really… I started listening and it made me wish everyone was better friends. We should be better neighbors.”  
  
“I agree,” he said. “We can do better.”  
  
She smiled as if he’d said something deeply profound, then said, rapidly, “Could I get a selfie with you?”  
  
“I… I’m just out shopping with my sister. I’m really not set up for selfies.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
He scanned her eyes for any sign that she was about to get angry, but he only saw disappointment. He sighed. “Well… if you don’t mind that I’m carrying groceries instead of a guitar.”  
  
The disappointment disappeared instantly, and she grabbed her phone. Miguel carefully watched the way she treated Coco—any sign of disrespect, and she’d be minus one selfie, but she smiled kindly and asked if she could come around, rather than just pushing Coco out of the way. Coco even managed to smile back and offered, without prompting, to take the picture.  
  
A few seconds later, it was over, and Madison was going off toward the Plaza, looking at her phone screen with delight.  
  
Coco rolled her eyes. “What did you tell her?”  
  
“We discussed geopolitics.”  
  
She waited.  
  
“She liked my concert, she was nice and she didn’t treat you badly, so I didn’t see any reason not to be nice.” He sighed. “That’s what it’s like, Coquis. Do you get that? If I stay, this is what it’s going to be like.”  
  
“I don’t mind.” Coco shrugged and went back to the onions, apparently not satisfied with the ones she’d picked from the bin. “She wasn’t bad. It only took a minute.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“You _promised_ , Miguel.”  
  
“My life is weird. I don’t want to make Santa Cecilia weird.”  
  
“There was a statue of a murderer up for seventy years. How much weirder could _you_ be? And at least you only left for a couple of years.”  
  
“I want to stay.”  
  
“So stay, cerebrito.”  
  
Dante gave an encouraging bark.  
  
“Okay, okay. But I’ll be gone a lot if I do. I may have to have an apartment in the capital for meetings and things.”  
  
She shrugged.  
  
“And… Coco, I think Rosa and Alejo and the kids need the old house more than I do.”  
  
“You can stay in your room. Tía Gloria can paint murals in it for you. Or I can.”  
  
“Yeah. Sure.”  
  
She gave him a very suspicious look, but apparently decided not to press the issue. They finished shopping and loaded everything into the little wagon and were on their way back to the bakery for pan de muerto and several of the family’s favorites when Dante eagerly turned in the wrong direction, heading up the hill and away from the hacienda.  
  
“Dante!” Coco called. “This way, silly!”  
  
Dante stopped and barked eagerly.  
  
“Something we need to see?” Miguel asked him.  
  
Another bark. Then Dante, apparently feeling fine, chased his tail for a minute.  
  
“Can it wait until after Día de Muertos?”  
  
Dante looked back and forth, gave a little yip, then ran back to them and led the way through the gate.  
  
There was definitely not time for Dante’s quest for the rest of the day. Miguel’s appearance had apparently thrown off the preparations, and everyone rushed to put the ofrenda together, hang the banners, make the offerings, and get supper together. Miguel dug out his fondue pot and left some chocolate and fruit on the table. Coco had made drawings for everyone. If Miguel hadn’t seen them come out of her sketchbook, he’d have thought they were the work of a fourteen or fifteen year old. Serafina’s and Alejo’s people had expanded the ofrenda now, and it stretched around the little room in a u-shape. Miguel hadn’t met this family, of course (there were people in his bloodline he hadn’t met), but he’d left a hello note to Serafina’s people the year she and Abel got married, and he quickly set about writing one to Alejo’s, telling them that they were welcome at the hacienda, and that Dante (at least) and probably Pepita—if she didn’t stay behind to nurse her foot—would be happy to greet their descendants for them. (Dante, in particular, seemed to enjoy this task, and had spent the first year running around to each new in-law, then barking sharply while looking in another direction. Miguel assumed that the ancestors were asking him to point out their people.)  
  
The twins and Alejo’s cousin Donato were called to furniture-moving duty, and the boys spent a good deal of time competing to see who was strongest, until Abuelita told them to cut it out. When Miguel did find a minute to take off Dante’s costume and check his bandages, he discovered that the cuts had entirely scarred over, and looked like they’d been healed for at least a year. Teto and Ángel helped Mamá spread the marigold petals (Teto explaining that they sent up something like laser beams to make a hole for the dead to come through), and Coco helped Tía Gloria and Tía Carmen in the kitchen. Miguel helped Papá and Abuelita clean up the workshop to please Mamá Imelda (Papá Franco had to finish two orders, since Mamá Imelda would _not_ be pleased with tardiness), while Tío Berto and Rosa climbed up to clean off the sign (which someone had apparently egged during the year) and touch up the paint.  
  
More than a few times during the day, Miguel saw Dante pawing at the gate, looking up the road and out of town. He wished—not for the first time—that he could share Dante’s vision. The day outside was mostly dedicated to children building shrines for other children who had passed (the Riveras, thankfully, did not have any, though Miguel had, for years, secretly lit a candle for the baby Mamá had lost when he was eight). Was he seeing the small wandering spirits? Miguel had seen some children in the Land of the Dead, waiting with families for Día de Muertos, but they had all been with parents; he supposed they had died together and remained together. Were the lonely children back today, roaming the streets and watching their friends and siblings growing up without them? And where had they been when he’d been on the far side of the bridge?  
  
But there was no way to know. He supposed he could ask Papá Héctor. But he had a feeling that Papá Héctor would have more pressing business to talk about tonight.  
  
They managed to finish the errands before sunset, and Tía Carmen set out a lovely supper. About halfway through it, Dante sat up straight, gave a joyous bark, and ran to an empty spot near the gate, sniffing the air and circling what looked like vacant areas on the ground. Once, twice… Miguel counted six circles.  
  
There should be eight.  
  
There were always eight.  
  
He didn’t say anything, but his anxiety grew as the night went on. The family gathered. Coco and Miguel played together—Coco took Papá Héctor’s guitar, because Miguel had a strong desire, though he had no idea why, to play the one he’d made and offered to Mamá Imelda. It was good to sing with his sister again, and her voice had gotten much stronger. Teto didn’t know the words to the verses of “Proud Corazon,” but he joined in happily on the chorus, climbing up a stepladder and singing out “Oiga mi gente” to the people on the street.  
  
Miguel felt safe and secure in the embrace of his living family, but he could see that Dante was agitated… and Pepita hadn’t returned.  
  
After the songs, the children went to bed and the rest of the family gathered around the well, leaving plenty of room for unseen visitors ( _who was missing?_ ), and chatted about the year. Abel introduced Julio to all and sundry, and Rosa introduced her new family, telling the exciting story of their trip north. (Alejo looked a little confused; it wasn’t exactly the normal way things were done outside the hacienda.) Tío Berto talked about the expansion of the business—“We need more apprentices!” he said. “It’s so busy we can barely keep up!”  
  
“Well, we can always put Miguel back to work,” Rosa suggested. “As he reminded me, he did do his apprenticeship.”  
  
“This is true,” Miguel said. “Of course, I could singlehandedly destroy the reputation of Rivera shoes if I started making them for customers.”  
  
“You’re not _that_ bad,” Abel said. “You make perfectly wearable chanclas.”  
  
“I think Miguel should make more guitars instead. We could make custom guitar straps for them.”  
  
“If I do that, I need more space for all sorts of things.”  
  
“Well, you used to have the whole continent of Europe, and your girlfriend’s personal castle.”  
  
“I had an apartment slightly bigger than my bedroom here.”  
  
“I visited you in that apartment,” Mamá said. “We could fit Papá Isidro’s house in there. Twice.”  
  
This turned into a bit of razzing about his abrupt and dramatic departure from Europe, and he played along, letting the jokes about his need for attention go without argument. Mostly he watched Dante, who was pacing in front of the main gate.  
  
Suddenly, Dante came to attention, and a moment later, a pair of white paws appeared under the gate. Pepita wriggled through. Dante leapt happily and ran in several wide circles, nipping here and there at empty spaces.  
  
Miguel felt his heart lift.  
  
They were all together again. His anxiety wasn’t entirely gone—why had two people been so late?—but whatever it was, it was all right.  
  
He stayed up until the family went to bed, then followed his own custom. He got out a blanket and pillow and went to the ofrenda room. Dante and Pepita were both there waiting for him.  
  
“Hi,” Miguel said. “Dante… who’s here? Papá Héctor?”  
  
Dante went to the bench.  
  
“Mamá Imelda?”  
  
He turned his head and yipped.  
  
Slowly, Miguel figured out where everyone was, and sat down on his blanket on the floor. “I’m sorry I missed last year. And I wasn’t exactly handy the year before. But I’m back. I think most of you heard everything already. Except for the part where I don’t know what’s… I don’t know why…” He sighed. “I’m going to try and get to sleep so we can really talk.” He turned down the light, curled up on the floor, and waited for sleep.  
  
It was slow going, as his mind tried to race with questions and theories, as he worried about what he was about to be told.  
  
But finally, the exertions of the day took their toll.  
  
His eyes closed, and he finally slipped into the dream.  
  
He didn’t go anywhere. He simply seemed to open his eyes. He was still in the ofrenda room, but it was lit now with guttering, purple-flamed candles. He could see shapes around him, moving delicately, but the only one that was really real was the young, black-haired skeleton sitting on the floor beside him.  
  
Miguel took a deep breath and squinted around trying to see the others. He thought he saw Papá Julio and Mamá Coco near the ofrenda, a pair of tall, thin shadows that might have been the twins near the door. He guessed that meant that the two unformed shapes near the window were Tía Rosita and Tía Victoria.  
  
And the hovering shadow, glowing darkly near Papá Héctor, would have to be Mamá Imelda.  
  
He raised a hand to her in greeting, and he felt/saw the shadow do the same.  
  
He’d never dreamed this literally.  
  
“Miguel,” Papá Héctor said. “We need to talk.”


	10. Chapter 10

_FROM_ NO APOLOGIES: AN AUTOMORTOGRAPHY _  
by Ernesto de la Cruz  
March, 2027  
There’s always a danger in dwelling on the past. I spent my life resisting it. I never allowed Santa Cecilia or the dusty carpas to drag me back into the morass that was my childhood. Childhood is a trap like no other. I had to move forward. I refused to be that boy again. Maybe that was what Héctor always represented to me, maybe that was why I was so misguided when it came to him. I had to leave that world behind if I was to become who I needed to be._  
  
**********  
**_BORN IN JOY_** _  
Gloria Rivera Hernandez  
2020  
_Oil on canvas. _  
The Rivera Institute, founded in memory of Héctor and Imelda Rivera, is a museum of the history of Mexican music, and a voice for exploited and endangered artists everywhere. After the murder of Héctor Rivera and the theft of his compositions, his widow, Imelda, was left to support herself and their family. At the Rivera Institute, we honor both the art and the industry by creating a safe and secure environment for musicians to develop artistically and intellectually, while creating a strong support system to keep their families and their dreams in reach.  
  
Here pictured in the early, happy days of their courtship and musical partnership, Héctor and Imelda perform together in Mariachi Plaza in Santa Cecilia Momaquixtia, Oaxaca…_  
  
“We don’t go through at Marigold Grand Central?” Héctor asked. “I didn’t know there were places… I never tried another place.”  
  
“You would have had no more luck,” Teresa told him, joining the quiet queue inside the old church. “The rules are the rules.”  
  
“Ah, Sister Teresa,” an old priest said. “I hope you’ll visit friends this year. You need to refresh your own soul as well as others.”  
  
“I don’t have many old friends left,” she said.  
  
“But she has our family,” Imelda said. “And I certainly hope she’ll come to the hacienda.”  
  
“You should,” the priest agreed. “She visits with the lost ones in the world,” he told Héctor and Imelda. “The lonely ones.”  
  
“Does it help them?” Héctor asked.  
  
“Sometimes.”  
  
Imelda frowned. “But if you’re not on their ofrendas…”  
  
“It doesn’t have to be the _right_ ofrenda,” Héctor said. “That’s why I thought Miguel could get me across even though I thought he was a stranger.”  
  
“Exactly,” Teresa said. “If I cross to somewhere near them, I can just walk.   
  
“But if you don’t know them, then how do you get to them?”  
  
“This place,” Teresa said, pointing around the church. “The bridge here takes us to people who need us. Well, to a place where people need comfort.” She apparently saw alarm on Héctor’s face, because she quickly backtracked. “Don’t worry. Wherever we come out, you can travel to an ofrenda you’re on. You’ll see. I once came out in California and took three steps to end up back in Santa Cecilia when I’d finished my duty. You’ll be able to get home. It’s easy.”  
  
“Because you can get to your own…”  
  
Teresa nodded. “I’m usually on the ofrenda at the convent in Santa Cecilia, and with the Madres in Mexico City. I stayed with them when I…” She stopped. “Well, I stayed with them once.”  
  
Imelda frowned, guessing that whatever Teresa had been in the capital for, it had to do with why de la Cruz was on her penitent’s altar back at the apartment. Something she had done had caused harm to Ernesto de la Cruz… Imelda wanted to know what it was so she could cheer it on.  
  
The queue moved on with very little of the jostling—or excitement—that there would be right now at Marigold Grand Central. There was one of the machines that recognized photos, but only one, and it seemed to be running slowly. There was also a line for artifacts, mostly populated by those who had lived before photography was cheap and plentiful.   
  
Of course the picture on the family ofrenda in Santa Cecilia was _also_ before photography had been cheap and plentiful. Coco had seen a photographer in town and desperately wanted to know what it felt like to have one’s picture taken, so Héctor had done three shows in the plaza alone (Ernesto had been off hustling carpas to come do a show) just to pay for it. In the end, Coco had been frightened of the smell of the chemicals and the flash of the powder, and Héctor had needed to clown for her to keep her from crying. Imelda had thought the whole thing was a ridiculous waste of money.  
  
And yet, when she’d held that photo of her family, seen them all together and looking back at her, frozen in time forever, she had loved them, and loved the thing that bound them together.  
  
She’d nearly torn the whole thing to shreds.  
  
Coco had stopped her.  
  
And of course, it had been Coco who’d chosen it for the ofrenda, ignoring decades worth of candid pictures and studio stills and even newspaper pictures that she might have used. Imelda had never questioned this, though late that first night after she’d made the crossing, when everyone else was in bed, Coco had come to the ofrenda, touched it softly and said, “Oh, Mamá, I hope this was the right one. It’s the only one I ever saw… the only one I remember mattering to you. I miss you so much. I wish I believed…” And then she’d started to weep, and Imelda had tried to comfort her, but she had never been able to feel it.  
  
“Imelda?” Héctor said.  
  
“I’m all right.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
“I’m sure.” She could see doubt in his eyes, so she took his hand. “I’ve been having… flashbacks, I suppose you’d say. I see the past so clearly that everything else goes away. But unless I disappeared, I think they’re harmless.”  
  
“You didn’t disappear.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
“But you did change, Imelda. For a minute… I don’t know. I can’t explain it. You looked different.”  
  
The line moved ahead as a whole group of people was passed to the artifact gate, and for the next few minutes, they were occupied with the logistics of the crossing. They reached the scanner, and all three of them were recognized easily. Imelda straightened her guitar across her back, and braced herself, in case something went wrong. Nothing did.   
  
A high, arched wooden door opened behind the scanner, and it led not to a bridge—not at first—but to a hallway glowing with soft marigold candle light. It changed, almost imperceptibly, as they walked, and by the time the church fell out of sight behind them, it was obviously a bridge, spanning the chasm between realms. It was smaller than the one at Marigold Grand Central, and there weren’t many people on it, even in comparison to the number who had gone through the church. Teresa chattered nervously about what new fashions would have come into season, and whether or not they’d all hear Miguel’s songs—“I’ve heard a few when I’ve crossed before!”—and whatever else came into her mind.  
  
The bridge sloped down, not into the cheerfully candle-lit cemetery in Santa Cecilia, but toward a bus station. The neighborhood was wildly decorated for Día de Muertos, and people were wandering around in skull make up. They all seemed to be drunk, and were partying wildly. Imelda could hear them shouting in several different languages. They were shooting video of each other and snapping pictures. She couldn’t see any other spirits, even the few who she’d thought were just ahead of them on the bridge.  
  
“Charming,” she said.  
  
“Yes,” Teresa said, serious now, casting her gaze around until she spotted a dirty-faced teenaged girl sitting on a tattered suitcase. She was looking at a group of men, who kept calling at her, waving money. Teresa sighed. “Okay. That’s where I’ll be. Between her and them.”  
  
“And you can do something?” Héctor asked.  
  
She nodded, then went to the girl and sat down beside her on the suitcase, reaching out to touch her shoulder. The girl suddenly leaned forward and started to weep.  
  
Imelda hurried over. “Teresa! She…”  
  
“She’s doing what she needs to,” Teresa said, all traces of the flighty girl gone for the moment. “You two go ahead.”  
  
“Are you sure you don’t need us…”  
  
“Imelda, go see your family. I think my friend here will be all right as soon as she thinks to call for her… cousin? Brother? I can’t tell. I’ll be along.”  
  
“But where…?”  
  
Teresa pointed with her chin. “Look for the petals. They’ll take you to your ofrenda.”  
  
“You’re sure?” Héctor said.  
  
“I’m sure. You’ve missed too many hours with your family, Héctor. Get home now.”  
  
Héctor took Imelda’s hand, but she could tell he had misgivings. So did she. The girl had no business out in the night, and she couldn’t imagine what Teresa meant to do. Of course, she couldn’t think what she and Héctor would be able to do, either.  
  
She spotted the first marigold petals glowing on the street. There were drifts and drifts of the things, and she supposed that everyone saw different paths lit here in the city. They led into various houses and apartments. She could now see a few spirits in the old buildings, ignoring the party outside to be with their loved ones, but it seemed strange to use a stranger’s private ofrenda for this. Finally, she spotted an outdoor shrine near a church, and sure enough, there were spirits there.  
  
“Hey, let me through!” one said. “I have five more ofrendas to visit tonight if I’m going to see all my grandchildren!”  
  
“Well, I have seven!”  
  
“Wait, wait!” Héctor called. “You don’t need to fight. The whole thing is lit up. You can both—”  
  
“Aren’t you Héctor Rivera?” one of the ghosts asked. “Hey, it’s Héctor Rivera! What are you doing up here? Don’t you belong in the south?”  
  
“Yeah!” another stranger called. “They’re Oaxacans!”  
  
“Hey, can I get an autograph?”  
  
“I don’t have a pen,” Héctor said. “Ask me back on the other side. But we can all get through here. See?” He took Imelda’s hand. “We’ll just go at the same time. No rush.”  
  
But they kept pelting him with questions, and finally, Imelda had to step in and say “Enough! We have family to see as well. If you could just let us…”  
  
And the wall of spirits opened, as if she’d given a command from a throne. The glowing altar beckoned them.  
  
Héctor tugged her hand, and they went into the soft orange light.  
  
There were small paths here, five or six, and Imelda couldn’t tell one from the other.  
  
Héctor looked at her. “What’s this?”  
  
“No idea. I suppose we pick one?”  
  
“There are about a hundred!”  
  
“What? I only see six.” She put her hand on her forehead. “Ofrendas. I never looked for one other than ours. I guess you’re on a lot of them now. And apparently, six people saw fit to include me as well.”  
  
“Which do we take?”  
  
Imelda willed one of them to burn brighter than the others, but none did. She shrugged. “Guess?”  
  
She took the rightmost path, for no reason at all, and Héctor followed along willingly enough. They landed in a small, brightly lit bedroom that Imelda had never seen before. A girl of about thirteen, her face painted white with large pink flowers, was singing into a toy microphone (along with a female singer who Imelda took to be the pretty girl on the computer screen, who was wandering through a Mayan ruin while butterflies danced around her) while two other girls, similarly painted, danced around in their pajamas. The walls were covered with pictures of Miguel (and a few others that Imelda didn’t recognize). The picture on the little ofrenda had obviously been culled from a magazine article, and it sat with many other old pictures of people growling into microphones.  
  
Héctor looked around, bemused. “What…?”  
  
“Si solo el mundo fuera amable,” the girl with the microphone belted, in an untutored but not half-bad soprano. “Si solo fuera pequeño…”  
  
“It’s Miguel’s,” Imelda said. “But why would Miguel’s fans put _our_ picture up?”   
  
“He’s still alive,” a young spirit said. Imelda turned to find her in a corner. She wore her hair in a cascade of dark brown curls, and had a red leather jacket. “He can’t visit. But you can.”  
  
“And you do?”  
  
“I visit fans sometimes.” She pointed at a picture. “That was me. I never got any older than that.”  
  
“Sympathies,” Héctor said. “But I’d really like to get to our family.”  
  
“Yeah. I’m going to visit mine later, after they’re done with the parties. Just step back in.” She pointed to the ofrenda.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
Imelda looked at the girls for a moment—the joy and the exuberance they had in their singing and dancing to Miguel’s song. Again, in a moment of perfect recall, she was spinning on the hillside, under the stars, purple flowers blooming in the tall grass while she and Teresa grasped each other’s hands and spun each other until they were dizzy, singing a silly childhood song while the twins looked on and…  
  
“Imelda?”  
  
She looked up and shook her head. Héctor was giving her a very strange look, and he grasped her hand tightly. They waved to the young spirit (who was now humming along with the tune and obviously trying to pick up the lyrics), and Héctor pulled her back into the void beyond the ofrenda. “I’m getting this,” he said. “It’s like when I visited Miguel in Austria. This is… this is no place. But it’s everywhere.”  
  
“But which path do we follow? Were there others then?”  
  
“No. That was leading from family to family. This is finding our way with strangers. Let’s try…” He looked around, at paths Imelda could see and many more she couldn’t. “Can you see that one? It’s pretty wide.”  
  
She saw it, and they stepped onto it together.  
  
It didn’t lead to the hacienda.  
  
Instead, she found herself in a grand ballroom, filled with tourists taking pictures. The ofrenda was a vast affair, with pictures and offerings for a hundred people, maybe more. Other spirits lounged easily, and Imelda picked up a dozen conversations about music. It was too crowded to see much of anyone clearly. She couldn’t see a photo of herself until she stepped back and almost lost cohesion from surprise.  
  
There wasn’t a photograph. The huge, crowded ofrenda was built around a large oil painting, apparently a permanent fixture of the room. There was an informational plaque beside it, but it was currently behind a photo of Pedro Infante, The portrait showed Héctor on a stool, playing the guitar, while she stood beside him, young and wild, a tambourine in her hand. She could feel the warm breeze in her hair, and smell the sweet and greasy tang of street food and…  
  
She shook herself out, and found herself back at the portrait.  
  
“Is that them?” a tourist in skull makeup asked a friend.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Gotta love the spin. Just dancing away with the tambourine. Like she _didn’t_ end up abusing four generations of her family.”  
  
“I think it’s someone from the family that painted it.”  
  
“Brainwashed.”  
  
Imelda ground her teeth. Héctor was giving them a furious glare, but there was nothing he could do here.  
  
“Ignore them,” she said. “I heard it a million times when I was alive.”  
  
“And ignored it?” he asked skeptically.  
  
She smiled. “Of course. You know me. I am always in control of myself, perfectly saintly, absolutely invulnerable…”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“I took a shoe to the occasional gossip. That’s not going to work here.”  
  
Héctor looked mutinous for a minute, like he might try taking off his own shoes and going after the gossips, but he apparently realized that it wouldn’t exactly make a difference. He looked at the ofrenda and pointed to a large book beneath the painting. “So this is where that appears from every year.”  
  
It was a glowing offering: the annual report of the Rivera fund, which Enrique had set up to help musicians with legal troubles. It would show up in the workshop tomorrow. The other offerings—food, instruments, any number of oddities, mostly for Héctor—would show up in an ofrenda room that Héctor left open for anyone to take from. He’d survived on such charity for many years.  
  
She considered taking the book, but she didn’t really have a free hand. Instead, she looked around at the scattered pictures. She wanted to get to Santa Cecilia, but, on the other hand, it had been a very long time since she’d seen any other place in the world. It was interesting, and she felt young again, and curious, and adventurous. When she’d been a girl—before she was a mother, before the obligations—she’d loved looking up roads and wondering what she would find if she’d traveled them, and she was standing there, on the dirt road beside the orphanage, staring up into the mountains and imagining—  
  
“Imelda.”  
  
She blinked and found herself back in the great hall. “Sorry.”  
  
“What’s happening?”  
  
“I don’t know. I just keep remembering.”  
  
He nodded and looked around the room. Suddenly, his eyes went wide. “We need to leave,” he said.  
  
“But where…?”  
  
“This is Ernesto’s house.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“The museum. I just realized. It’s the same. And I remembered. They made it into a museum, but there’ll be a picture of him here, and I’m not interested in that conversation.”  
  
Imelda was tempted to look around—the thought of belting de la Cruz across the face again was tempting—but there was a press for time.  
  
The next path took them to a university—apparently in the States, since everyone was speaking English and having a heated discussion about the cultural history of the holiday (her English had always been mediocre in life—good enough for shoe orders, not real conversations—but on this side of the bridge, for some reason, languages were easier.) After that, they landed in a small house in the Capital where a little girl was playing a toy guitar, but it wasn’t a fan’s home—when her papá came to get her, Imelda recognized him as Miguel’s old tutor, Carlos. There were other pictures here, but the spirits hadn’t arrived yet. Their offerings were still glowing in front of their pictures.  
  
“Can I say kaddish for Papá Aron?” the little girl asked. “Would he like that? Mamá got me to learn all the words.”  
  
“I think remembering those traditions would be a good gift,” Carlos said. “Though I wonder sometimes how they feel about their descendants celebrating Aztec holidays. But Mamá’s rabbi says it’s all right, so…”  
  
The girl ignored this. “Can I sing it?  I made a song for it.”  
  
“If you want to. I don’t know all the words myself…”  
  
“Can I give him the books I found in the attic? Or are they still his?”  
  
“I… I don’t know. Maybe we should call the Riveras. Miguel will know.” Carlos pulled one of those new style phones from his pocket, and suddenly, the light on the ofrenda changed.  
  
Héctor sighed with relief.  
  
“Family to family,” he said. “Let’s go.”  
  
Imelda turned. There was now a wide and easy path from the Navarros’ ofrenda.  
  
“Hey!” Carlos said. “Miguel… are you still home or are you off causing more drama? You sound a little out of it…”  
  
Imelda and Héctor looked at each other, and, without a word, stepped through the ofrenda.  
  
It didn’t take them directly to the hacienda. Instead, they emerged into a room Imelda didn’t recognize for a moment—a room with a mural on the wall showing the entire town, with a lyric from “Remember Me” scrolled over the top. There was a set of shelves styled as an alebrije and beyond the great glass doors, the cemetery…  
  
“Oh!” she stomped her foot. “De la Cruz’s tomb.”  
  
“He’s not here anymore,” Héctor said. “It’s a community ofrenda now, remember? I guess… maybe Carlos is more community than family.” He squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. We can walk from here.”  
  
“I’m never leaving from anywhere other than Marigold Grand Central again.”  
  
“Hopefully, we’ll never have to.”  
  
They made their way through the crowded cemetery, waving to spirits who recognized them, checking on their graves as they always did. Imelda recognized that a patch beside her name had been scrubbed extra hard lately. It took her a moment to realize that the two teenage boys in skull makeup who were leaning on the stone and glaring at tourists were Manny and Benny.  
  
“Wonderful. They’ve set up a guard,” she said.  
  
“I’m surprised Elena let them out of the house over the holiday.”  
  
It was true—the Rivera family did not habitually haunt the cemetery, unlike most of Santa Cecilia. Their years of isolation had created different traditions.  
  
The town was aglow as always, and everything looked the same. There was a large banner over the square announcing the upcoming music festival, to take place over Posadas. There was also a large billboard featuring a picture of Miguel, looking absurdly handsome. It was an ad for an album of songs from _La Niñera_ (“Y más!” a blurb promised with great excitement), and he was standing in the sunset. The whole thing was framed with giant, sunset-tinted hibiscus flowers. Miguel was sitting on a rock, Héctor’s guitar planted between his feet, while he leaned his head dramatically against the neck. For some reason, he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his overly long hair fell ridiculously around his shoulders, catching the beams of the setting sun.  
  
Show business. Imelda rolled her eyes.  
  
“I hope he left us the album,” Héctor said. “And a recording of the show. I love stories about you.”  
  
“I wish there had been fewer this year,” Imelda grumbled.  
  
Héctor put his arm around her and kissed her head.  
  
“MEEOW!”  
  
Imelda looked down. Pepita, in her mortal cat form, stalked out of an alley and gave her a very cross look.  
  
“I’m sorry!” she said. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”  
  
Pepita sat down and curled her tail around her hindquarters, continuing to glare.  
  
“I got a little lost getting here, but here I am. I could use a guide.”  
  
The cat gave an almost human sigh, then got up and padded toward the hacienda.  
  
The gate was closed and locked, and for good reason. Tourists were all over the street, leaning out of windows, trying to take pictures over the walls.  
  
Pepita pawed under the gate, then pulled herself through.  
  
Héctor and Imelda just passed through it. It was a strange sensation, and not one that Imelda had ever expected. Elena had always just thrown the gate open before.  
  
Once they were inside, Coco ran over to them. She’d apparently already been to the ofrenda, because she was wearing a new shawl—someone had apparently restored the one she’d made back in the sixties, with its intricate weaving and tiny pearls. “Mamá! Papá! Where have you been?”  
  
“Later,” Héctor said. “It’s been a bit crazy. I want to enjoy the family now.”  
  
Coco nodded. “Okay. They’ve been talking for about half an hour. Miguel is home—obviously. He’s going to stay. He’s talking about making guitars. And I guess he had a fancy apartment in Austria. The family needs more apprentices because business is good. And that handsome boy is Rosa’s fiancé.” She pointed to a young man with solid muscles and leather-stained hands that Imelda approved of. “He’s an apprentice here now. He has two little cousins, and the three of them had quite an adventure coming up to Mexico. The twins…”  
  
“We saw them. What did Miguel do that caused drama?”  
  
“How did you know that?”  
  
“It’s been a winding journey,” Héctor said.  
  
“Apparently, he just left Europe in the middle of the night and some ex-girlfriend decided he’d jumped in a river. The family isn’t fond of her. Miguel keeps saying that she’s not that bad.”  
  
They settled in for the rest of the talk. The family was lounging comfortably at the table, or sitting on the ground. Miguel was sitting by Rosa on the well housing. Both Héctor’s guitar and his own were out; Imelda was interested to note that the one he was actually holding was not Héctor’s, but his own, the twin of the one she carried on her own back.  
  
Abel and his wife had a new baby. Miguel was talking about giving the old house to Rosa and Alejo. Serafina’s new line of purses was selling quite well, and Berto was working on a new criss-cross strap design that would let airy sandals feel as secure as sturdy shoes. Gloria had been spending more time painting than working in the shop—“I was never better than average at leatherwork, anyway; I always did the decorative things”—and she was teaching little Coco to paint with oils, too.   
  
“She has a knack for art,” Miguel added. “I’d think the things she draws were made by someone much older than nine. And it’s too bad Teto’s already asleep. You should hear his stories.”  
  
Rosa punched his arm affectionately. “You like them because you’re a superhero and your guitar has magic powers.” She nodded at Héctor’s guitar.  
  
“That guitar _does_ have magic powers. Tetito doesn’t know the half of it.”  
  
It was mainly calm, comfortable talk. No one mentioned the locked gates or the fans outside, or the silly billboard in the square, though Miguel did mention that he’d left the new album, reviews of the show, and a recording of the dress rehearsal on the ofrenda.  
  
When everyone went off to bed (except for Miguel), the dead went to the ofrenda room. For a split second, crossing the threshold, Imelda felt another memory tug at her, a meaningless moment of crossing into this room when it had just been her quiet space, a place to sketch out new designs and work on the books. It was here that she’d tried in vain to write letters to her vanished husband, here that she’d closed the door and allowed herself fear and grief. For that brief moment, she crossed the room, sat down at her work table, and covered her eyes with one hand, trying to imagine how her life would go forward. Then she was back, and it was the ofrenda room again, and the family mulled around, enjoying their offerings, really waiting, as they always did, for Miguel. The odd seconds of being almost physically in the past fell away, and Imelda shook off the strange feeling.  
  
When Miguel appeared, he didn’t talk for long. Up close, Imelda could see that he had dark circles under his eyes, that a weight appeared to be on his shoulders. He knew something was wrong. He announced that he was just going to try and get to sleep as fast as possible so he could check in with Héctor.   
  
Unfortunately, he seemed to be having trouble drifting off.  
  
“Come with me,” Héctor said.  
  
“What?”  
  
“When he goes to sleep. I want to try to bring you with me. He knows something’s wrong. Maybe… I think we should try…”  
  
“I’ve never been able to cross into his dreams.”  
  
“I think if I bring you, we can do it.”  
  
“I don’t want him to worry, Héctor. Look at him. He’s already stressed. Just have your normal talk.”  
  
“I don’t think he’d let me pretend everything’s all right. I think the stress is… all part of this.”  
  
Miguel finally drifted off.   
  
Héctor took Imelda’s hand tightly, then crouched beside Miguel and touched his head.  
  
Usually when this happened, Héctor just relaxed, and seemed to be sleeping himself. Not this time. Apparently, trying to hold onto both worlds took an effort.  
  
The room wavered, and Imelda thought for a moment that she was going to go into another of those vivid memories, but it righted itself. She could see Miguel sleeping on the floor… but also sitting up and blinking around, confused.  
  
Then he looked at her, squinting, and raised a hand in greeting.  
  
She raised her own.  
  
He looked at Héctor, who said, “Miguel, we need to talk.”  
  
Miguel nodded. “What is… I can see… almost see…”  
  
“Can you hear me?” Imelda asked.  
  
“Yes… just barely, but yes.”  
  
“I’ll talk,” Héctor said. “Miguel, there’s trouble with the memories.”  
  
“I know! I never meant…”  
  
“It’s okay,” Imelda said. “Not your fault.”  
  
“But you can help,” Héctor said.  
  
And he told Miguel what had been happening.  
  
Miguel sat back, horror-struck, and looked at Imelda. He didn’t seem to be seeing her clearly, because he was looking at the top of her head, but he _was_ aware of her. “Oh, Mamá Imelda, I never meant for this to happen. I… I didn’t… I’m so… forgive me.”  
  
“There’s no forgiveness needed,” she said, then tried to smile. “Except maybe for that absurd billboard in the square. Put your shirt on for pictures, Miguelito.”  
  
He was surprised into a laugh. “I… yes, Mamá Imelda. I’ll remember that.”  
  
“And get a haircut.”  
  
“I like it long.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Grooming tips aside,” Héctor said, “this isn’t easy to keep up. Miguel… can you help?”  
  
“I’ll do everything I can. I don’t know if people will listen. They want to believe this. But I’ll… I’ll tell stories. I’ll tell everything if I have to. Anything.”  
  
“I don’t think telling everything will help,” Imelda said. “If you mean talking about your visit.”  
  
“But it means I know you.”  
  
“Héctor knows me, too, and no one listens to him in the Land of the Dead.”  
  
“Then what _can_ I do?”  
  
“I don’t know. You don’t have to do anything. You—”  
  
“I’m going to help you,” he said with a great deal of finality. “No arguments.”  
  
Héctor grinned. “No arguments with Mamá Imelda? Good luck with that.”  
  
Imelda gave him a stern look. “Miguel, all I’m saying is that this isn’t your responsibility. You didn’t do anything wrong.”  
  
“Except the billboard?”  
  
“Yes, well, there is that.”  
  
“And I let people call me a churro.”  
  
“Which you would have stopped _how_ , exactly?”  
  
“And there were girls I shouldn’t have…”  
  
“ _That’s_ on you,” Héctor said, “but it has nothing to do with this. And I don’t know how long I can hold this together. Miguel, whatever you _can_ do, please… I know I ask things of you that I shouldn’t ask—that business with the photo was already too much”—Miguel gave him an honestly puzzled look at this—“and I know this isn’t an easy one. But you may be the only one who can help.”  
  
“I will. I’ll find something, some way to…”  
  
Miguel’s voice faded, and then he was just sleeping on the floor, Héctor crouched beside him.  
  
“I lost hold,” Héctor said.  
  
“It’s all right.”  
  
He smiled. “Yes, the important things are covered. Life, death… the length of his hair.”  
  
“Well, it’s a little silly.” She ruffled Héctor’s own hair. “Go on and have your usual talk then.”  
  
He nodded dubiously, but settled in for his more usual kind of shared dream.  
  
Imelda wandered the hacienda, as she usually did on Día de los Muertos. The workshop had expanded, and the order list was very long. They weren’t kidding about needing new apprentices. The children’s music room—which had been Coco’s, was filling up with new instruments. Berto and Carmen had apparently not been able to sleep, and were having ice cream in the indoor kitchen. Rosa had snuck into the guest room that had been given to Alejo and his little cousins, but they were just cuddling and talking about the upcoming wedding, and the possibility of moving into the old house, which had been empty since Imelda herself had crossed over. It was mostly being used for storage now, and she drifted into it. The memories here tried to pull her in, and succeeded twice, once bringing her to the day she’d destroyed the photo, when Coco had thrown herself onto the broken glass and pleaded to be allowed to keep the last scrap of Héctor’s life. Later, for no reason at all, she’d found herself chopping onions for a mole, but that hadn’t lasted long.  
  
It was nearly sunrise when she finished her inspection, and she rejoined Héctor, who’d left Miguel’s dream at last. The family left together, winding through the streets of Santa Cecilia with the other lingering spirits, heading for the bridge.  
  
“I think we’ll be all right,” Victoria said. “Everyone stay around Mamá Imelda. We’ll go back to the workshop, and Abuelita, I swear, I will take to my chancla if you wander off again.”  
  
“Don’t talk to your grandmother that way,” Coco said. “You know better.”  
  
“I don’t want her lost again.”  
  
Imelda listened to this, leaning against Héctor’s arm, and then she was walking this same street, but it was sunny and Héctor’s arm was warm, and his pulse threaded under her fingers. His skin was still hot, and so was hers, and she was sure everyone was looking at her, but she didn’t care, because Héctor was hers, and would always be hers. Let the rest of the town sneer at her. What did she care?  
  
In the distance, she could hear the mariachis playing in the square, and why were they walking toward the cemetery? That wasn’t right. She tugged at his hand. “Let’s go to the theater,” she said.  
  
“What? Imelda, we need to go home.”  
  
“We can sing. We should be singing.”  
  
“Imelda, what’s wrong?”  
  
“Nothing’s wrong. I just want to sing. Everything in me wants to sing.”  
  
“Imelda…”  
  
She turned and tugged at his hand, but he didn’t move. She let go and ran, laughing. The sun was warm on her shoulders, and her hair fell loose and free around her face. There was a breeze and…  
  
“IMELDA!”  
  
She opened her eyes, though she’d thought they were open already, and it was night, and the world was full of ghosts. She looked at her hands. The skin was gone. And Héctor was… and…  
  
He was standing on a bridge, a golden orange bridge, and…  
  
And she was old. She was older than old. There had been a whole life, and there were Coco and Victoria and Julio and the twins and they were all a bit ahead of her, and she had run backwards, away from the bridge. Away from home.  
  
Toward home.  
  
“Imelda, come here,” Héctor said frantically. “Come now, before sunrise.”  
  
But sunrise was here. The petals of the bridge were glowing with it.  
  
But it was the middle of the day and she was sixteen and she was with the boy she loved more than anything and she wanted to run toward the hills, to follow the road to wherever it led and…  
  
It was sunrise.  
  
And the bridge began to collapse.  
  
Héctor was on the far side of a growing gap. He screamed, “IMELDA!”  
  
And she was alone.


	11. Chapter 11

_PLEASE STOP  
from MiguelZapatero.com/en, the Official Site of Miguel Rivera, November 2, 2027  
Miguel asked me to do the English translation of the video he posted this morning, because he’s not quite comfortable enough with English to do it. I will ask, as his friend—and a friend of his family—that you read it, believe it, and share it.—BriSha  
\---  
“Good morning. It’s almost sunrise on Día de los Muertos here in Mexico, and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about things that have been happening lately. I’m grateful to all of my fans for the support and love you’ve always given so freely to me. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. But lately, I’ve read and heard a lot of comments about my family—about my grandmother, about my great-great-grandmother, about our customs—that are hurtful. Please understand that I love my family more than anything, including music, and when I hear them described as crazy, or tyrants, or abusive, it hurts me. I am not brainwashed, and neither are they. My childhood was secure, warm, and loving.  
  
We were victims of a murder, and it left a scar, but that wound didn’t come from us. It didn’t come from Mamá Imelda. It came from Ernesto de la Cruz, and no matter what you might hear, it was nothing but an act of malice and cruelty. He put a knife into my family, and, yes, it did damage us, but it didn’t destroy us or turn us into monsters. It left a strange custom, and yes, it was a custom that was inconvenient to me as a child. But even then, even when I believed our customs were written into the stones of our house and were keeping me from what I wanted, I never believed that my family would hurt me or shun me if I chose not to follow them. I respected the rules—as much as any child does—even then, simply because I loved and respected my family and did not want to be separate from them. I’m glad the custom has been dropped, but please understand that a custom is all it was.  
  
I am asking you—begging you—to please stop insulting my family.  
  
My Mamá Imelda was a brilliant, strong woman. She survived the brunt of the assault on the family, and she kept herself and my Mamá Coco on their feet, building a business that I am very proud of. I was an apprentice shoemaker, and I make my own shoes still—that’s why, when it turned out some other Miguel Rivera already had the domain, I chose it as one of my professional names. Mamá Imelda loved her family fiercely and she protected them as well as she could from a world that had hurt her very badly. We kept up her customs not because we feared her, but because we loved her, even five generations down the line. I hope still that someday, I will be as lucky as my Papá Héctor was, to fall in love with a woman like that…”_  
  
“Miguel, you can do that in English,” Bridget said, not looking at the screen, since she was technically watching someone’s house. “Just do another recording session. German, too. You could probably translate your whole show, to tell the truth.”  
  
“It’s not about the English,” he said. “It’s more about the transcription, and I don’t trust my English spelling. Text is easier to share and quote and spread as far as it will go. Are you okay with that?”  
  
“I’m okay with it. Do you want me to add something about calling you foods while I’m at it?”  
  
“No. I’ll… I don’t know. I’ll make a joke about it the next time I do a vid. Just something funny, so they don’t feel like I’m attacking them twice. They don’t mean anything bad.” Miguel looked beyond her, through her phone’s camera, as well as he could. The early Virginia sunrise was visible through the windows of her car. “Are you sure you’re okay to talk?”  
  
“If you weren’t really on the phone, I’d be pretending to have a conversation. It makes sense of me sitting here for half an hour at six a.m.—I had to take a call from a friend and pulled over for it. I may randomly start crying to sell it. We’re good. Do you want me to do a Spanish transcription while I’m in there?”  
  
“No, I wrote it before I taped it. I’ll post it at the same time.”  
  
“You’re sure? Because I’m staking out an accountant in the world’s dullest suburb, and he won’t even get to his incredibly dull office for two more hours. I could use some excitement.”  
  
“You know what’s exciting? Coming to Mexico. We have lots of excitement.”  
  
“It would also be very exciting to have a visitor here.”  
  
“I’m not leaving home for a good long while. I need to… I don’t even know what I need, but I know it’s here.”  
  
She was quiet for a minute. “Are you all right, really?”  
  
He rolled his eyes. “You win the award for the longest time it took to ask that. I was about to get insulted that you hadn’t decided that I’d jumped into the river or something. Anja and Ximena have been all over it.”  
  
Now, she did look at the phone, alarmed. “Now, I’m _actually_ worried. You called me from DeGaulle to tell me what you were doing. You don’t remember?”  
  
Miguel thought about it. He remembered wandering DeGaulle, getting a sandwich, and watching one of the movies he had on his phone. There was wireless charging in the first class lounge, and he’d watched the battery fill up, and…  
  
And he’d decided, at fifty percent, that he wanted to talk to Bridget. Because he’d been bored sitting around the airport, and he wasn’t on his way to see her. She’d been six hours ahead of him, and was wearing her pajamas (really, a ratty old tee shirt and a pair of shorts) while she studied. They’d joked about airport calls—she always called him when she traveled as well. He rubbed his head. “Sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be sorry.” She frowned. “If I’d known Mena was worried, I’d have called her.”  
  
“But not Anja?”  
  
She didn’t answer.  
  
Miguel sighed. “I’m okay. I was tired that day. I’m better now. Did I… I didn’t tell you why I left, did I? I mean, did I say anything weird happened? Everyone says something must have, but I don’t remember anything.”  
  
“No. You just said you’d had it with the scene.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“For what it’s worth, as a former psych major, I think it was probably a hundred little things instead of some giant trauma. You sounded a little loopy, but not upset. And you’ve told me about enough little things over the last year to make me want to go over there with a sword drawn.”  
  
“Always good to have FBI protection.”  
  
“Well, given that they probably background checked everyone in a five country radius of me, they owe it.” She smiled. “Look, my crooked accountant is coming out of his house. I have to figure out a way to follow him on his morning jog. I’ll put your translation up later. Same password for your page?”  
  
“Should be. You’re on the list for any changes. I’m not sure _I_ am, but I’m sure _you_ are.”  
  
“Okay. Take better care, Miguel. I mean it.”  
  
“I will.”  
  
“Still love you.”  
  
“Still love you, too.”  
  
He hung up and looked at Dante, who’d been up all night and had finally fallen asleep when Pepita had wandered away with (Miguel presumed) the rest of the family.  
  
Miguel had been up at four-thirty, as soon as he came out of his dream with Papá Héctor, and he’d recorded the message for his website before the conversation started to fade (and while, he hoped, Papá Héctor could see him taking some kind of action, to put his mind at ease). The dreams stayed with him—he hadn’t ever entirely forgotten one of their talks—but he knew that, by noon, it would seem like his memories of the Land of the Dead: faded and fragile, precious, but too delicate to handle casually.  
  
_Do what you can,_ Papá Héctor had said.  
  
In their shared dream, they’d been up on the hill, looking out over Santa Cecilia. The other dream—the real one, the one where he’d nearly seen everyone—had faded out, and then everything else had faded in, just like any other year.   
  
“I will,” he’d promised. “I don’t know how, but I swear I will.”  
  
“That’s all I can ask. And Mamá Imelda will be very angry with me if I let you think that it makes it your fault just because there might be something you can do about it. It’s not.”  
  
“You said that already.”  
  
“But I don’t think you believe me.”  
  
“I wrote the play,” Miguel said. “And everyone decided it was open season to ‘revise’ family memory or something.”  
  
“De la Cruz is whispering to someone,” Papá Héctor said. “He’s making a mess in the Land of the Dead. He wrote a book.”  
  
“He wrote something on his own? That’s progress.”  
  
“Oh, Ernesto can talk about _himself_ for hours.”  
  
“It’s surprisingly easy to do.”  
  
Papá Héctor smiled wearily. “So… how does it feel to be twenty-two? You’re older than I am now.”  
  
“Pretty much like twenty-one, except I was worried that… I don’t know. That you’d think it was weird to talk to me now.”  
  
“I was worried you’d forget about me like some old childhood friend.”  
  
“Never.”  
  
“Never here, either.”  
  
Miguel shrugged. “I _did_ think about it on my birthday. I was away from home and I just… I just kept thinking, I need to get home before it’s too late.”  
  
“It’s not late for you.”  
  
“I do feel like I’m falling behind. Mamá Coco was four by the time you were my age… well, the age that… um… and I’m still… dating… girls who I’m not… well, the girl I was with that day was…”  
  
“Last year, Rosa had a very colorful description of her.”  
  
“She has a few of them.”  
  
“Is she wrong? Do you have different feelings?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“And the others?”  
  
“Mena’s still my friend. Bridget’s still my friend. Anja’s still sharing early morning phone privileges with one of my friends.”  
  
“Charming.”  
  
“The whole thing was my fault, not hers. I knew who she was.”  
  
He nodded, but Miguel could see that he was struggling to stay off the only topic that mattered to him. Normally, he’d have a lot of high-spirited commentary on Miguel’s various foibles, or even eye-rolling advice about how to make impossible situations work for him.  Miguel’s personal favorite had been the year he’d schemed to fix the Bridget problem by positing that Miguel was rich enough to by homes in both countries, and if he shopped well, she could have a commuter plane to get to work. He’d be asking about music and performances, and telling Miguel about his own shows in the Land of the Dead. But there wasn’t even perfunctory music talk this year.   
  
Miguel reached over. “I’ll get Mamá Imelda out of trouble.”  
  
He smiled faintly. “I’m not covering up very well.”  
  
“You don’t need to.”  
  
“I’ve been in love with Imelda since I was thirteen years old. I lost her for so long. And I feel like I can’t do anything.”  
  
“You’re doing everything you can. You should just… I don’t know. It’s not your fault.”  
  
“I’m the one who put her in the spotlight. She never wanted to be there.” Miguel cocked an eyebrow at him and he smiled. “All right, she likes the little spotlight. But this big one… no. She never wanted it. _I_ barely wanted it.”  
  
“I really wanted it. Now, I wish I could just turn it off for a while.” Miguel shrugged. “It doesn’t turn off, though. You should find people to help you handle it. My manager, Hugo, I think his bisabuelo was in the business. Maybe you could give him a call.”  
  
“Is this how it’s going to be, with you getting older? _I_ come to you with my problems and you give _me_ advice? Shall I start calling you Papá Miguel?”  
  
“Don’t joke about that. You have a hundred and five years on me, and I know you’ve been aware of them and learned things and seen things the whole time and—”  
  
He held up a hand and smiled. “Miguel. It was a joke, mijo. That’s all.”  
  
Miguel smiled dutifully, but his heart was heavy. A joke, it may have been, but there was a reality to it that he didn’t like. Every year he had now would be a year that had been stolen from Papá Héctor. Not by _him_ , of course, but…  
  
He suddenly remembered being small and frightened and utterly broken in the cenote, how he’d clung to Papá Héctor, wept into his hollow chest. They’d thought each other strangers then, but even so, nothing had ever been as great a comfort to him, in this world or the other one. He had a wild, insane desire to throw himself back into Papá Héctor’s arms and be that boy again.  
  
But time moved on.  
  
He hadn’t flung himself onto his great-great-grandfather, and he hadn’t cried. Instead, they’d talked out what he might do to get the family out of the hole that someone else—the same someone else it had always been—had dug them into. And he’d woken up at four-thirty, knowing he wasn’t alone, and come here, to Mamá Coco’s old room, to film a video for strangers about matters that never should have been their business in the first place.  
  
He tried to think of what else he could do. The message was done in Spanish, and he’d have it up in an hour (unless Toni had changed the password), and Bridget would get the English up, and maybe he’d hit German later, too. He could, technically, put it up in Zapoteco, but he couldn’t imagine any of his cousins on that side having to be told that they shouldn’t insult ancestors. Well, probably there _were_ some, but not among those who bothered to learn the language. At any rate, it wasn’t one of the official languages on the website, and almost everyone who dropped by spoke enough Spanish, English, or German to follow along, though he supposed he’d need to add French and Chinese soon. The soundtrack of _La Niñera_ was trending in Hong Kong, and Paris _was_ agitating for a translation, which was why he’d taken the meeting with Anja’s friend.   
  
He checked his watch. It was only five-forty-five now, and even the family wasn’t up yet. It wouldn’t be a good time to start practicing, even though the music room was at a little distance from where people slept. He supposed he could try writing, if it was true that he hadn’t written for—  
  
Dante awakened with a loud yelp, rolling over and jumping to his feet. He was wearing the printed Hawaiian shirt again (Miguel had been worried that the vet might drop by to check on him last night, but she hadn’t), and he looked like half an alebrije. He jumped at the window, scrabbling his claws on the wall.  
  
“Hey!” Miguel said. “Hey, boy, what’s…”  
  
He went to the window and looked through it. Dante was louder, but on the far side, a blur of black and white was leaping fruitlessly at the glass.  
  
Miguel opened the window. “Pep—”  
  
Pepita leapt through the window, grabbing onto his jacket with her claws outstretched, opening her mouth and letting out a loud, frantic yowl.  
  
Miguel steadied her, but she didn’t let go. He was glad he’d put on an old charro jacket for the video—the embroidery was as good as Kevlar. Without it, he had a feeling his chest would be in ribbons. “Pepita, shh, it’s okay, I’ve got you, what’s wrong, it’s okay, you’re okay. I made a video, I hope it will help her and…”  
  
Another yowl, then Pepita twisted in his arms, leapt over his wrist, and ran at the door of the room, pawing underneath it and trying to get out into the hacienda. Dante also started to bark.  
  
“Guys, come on,” he said. “Everyone’s sleeping.” He had to scoop Pepita out of the way to open the door, but she escaped as soon as there was enough room and went tearing across the courtyard to the workshop, Dante in close pursuit.  
  
Miguel followed them.  
  
He was halfway there when he heard it.  
  
It almost didn’t register, because it was such a normal sound in this place, so much a part of the fabric of life here that at first, it was just background noise.  
  
The percussive whirring of a heavy-duty sewing machine.  
  
But the family was still asleep.  
  
Miguel broke into a run.  
  
The workshop was deserted, but the oldest machine, the one that Mamá Elena kept saying she needed to donate to a museum instead of using on rare occasions—the one Mamá Imelda had bought in the nineteen-fifties—was running. There was no thread in it, no leather being fed through it, but the chair was pushed back, and the treadle was down. As Miguel watched, the treadle lifted, the whirring stopped, and the foot went up.  
  
“What…”  
  
Pepita ran over and raised her paw, and Miguel _saw_ her ears flatten as she was petted.  
  
She ran back to him and yowled.  
  
He dropped to one knee and looked her in the eye. “Mamá Imelda?” he asked.  
  
She yowled again, then jumped up onto his shoulder and began to frantically knead at his jacket, nuzzling her nose behind his ear for comfort. He scratched between her shoulders, staring at the shadowy spot where the old wooden stool sat behind the machine.  
  
The treadle went down again.  
  
He squinted, wondering if he’d fallen asleep again, if somehow he’d slipped into another hyper-real view of the dead. He couldn’t see anything when he looked straight ahead, but when he dipped his head to try and cuddle the distressed cat, he thought he could see… something… from the corner of his eye. A shadow. A sense of someone being there, bent over the machine, holding a piece of leather as she ran a seam along the vamp and…  
  
He didn’t look straight at her. He kept his head down, kept sensing that shadow, and said, “Mamá Imelda? Are you all right?”  
  
And just for a moment, he felt the shift. He was still in the workshop, but everything was newer, except for the things that weren’t there yet. There were neat men’s wingtips lining the shelves, and a pile of fresh leather in the corner, just past where he could see it. _Everything_ was just past where he could see it and he knew if he looked up from Pepita’s fur, he’d see nothing different.  
  
“I’m fine,” a voice said, and it wasn’t something he heard with his ears. It was the kind of voice he heard in his head when the best songs came to him from nowhere. It was the kind of voice that he practiced interviews with when he was bored and couldn’t sleep. It was the whisper of a re-run conversation, when he tried to think of a hundred better ways to handle something than he had actually done.  
  
It was an inner voice.  
  
But it wasn’t _his_.  
  
“I’m fine. I just wanted to get these pumps finished up before we get started for the day. Mother Superior will be by and…”  
  
“It’s Miguel,” he said out loud. “Mamá Imelda, it’s Miguel.”  
  
Nothing changed, but everything did. Miguel looked up. The workshop was empty, but it was in 2027, with Tía Gloria’s computer sitting at the public window, which had been moved since Mamá Imelda’s death, moved to accommodate the little museum.  
  
Miguel looked at the machine.  
  
There was a small tinwork mirror on the wall, a souvenir of one of Tía Gloria’s trips, and in it, Miguel could see the faint shape of a woman’s face—not a skeleton, not a decorated sugar skull, but a pretty woman, with wide brown eyes, her hair pulled back severely.  
  
“Help me,” she whispered.  
  
Then she was gone.


	12. Chapter 12

_LETTER FROM SISTER TERESA LA PERDIDA TO DELMAR ESSARÁ, 1944  
Collected in _The Shattered Bell: A New Study of Ernesto de la Cruz _, by Jésus Varela, 2027  
…And, no, dear friend, I don’t feel anything has changed. I urge you, as always, to come here to Santa Cecilia and share what you believe. I promised you I would be bound as if by the rules of the confessional to not share what you spoke of. But I think what you say might bring peace. And pain. You’re not wrong about that. But sometimes, the pain has to be suffered, if it’s going to end.  
  
I won’t pretend that the conversation would be easy. She can be prickly and her temper is notoriously short. She may scream. She may call you vile names. She may pretend not to believe you, or demand proof of what you cannot prove. Her tempers are violent storms, but they are short ones to weather…  
  
**********  
LETTER FROM DELMAR ESSARÁ TO SISTER TERESA LA PERDIDA, 1944  
Collected in _The Shattered Bell: A New Study of Ernesto de la Cruz _, by Jésus Varela, 2027  
Dearest sister, I wish I shared your faith. I will be in Santa Cecilia, of course, when they move the body, and we can speak again then. I am the closest thing Ernesto had to family. I won’t speak—the fans tend to throw things at me and call for my head—but I will arrange the spectacle. God knows, Ernesto would not have permitted being removed to Santa Cecilia if there were not a spectacle to justify it. I think the mausoleum is nearly ostentatious enough to make him happy. But as I will be putting the guitar there—the guitar which you say has caused such trouble—I doubt that Doña Rivera will have a great deal of interest in talking to me. I know, I know. You believe I should come clean. You believe I should tell her that I think it was stolen property, and return it. But to what end? I can’t disprove Ernesto’s story. For all I know, it’s true, and the dark imaginings of my mind are just fever dreams. There were some rare occasions on which he told the truth, after all. The costume was left behind because it was stained. The wedding ring was in the pocket because the man who wore it didn’t want to feel guilt about his abandonment. Or he sold it to Ernesto for cash, which was what he told me when I confronted him about it. How would any of these things bring peace to the Rivera family? If anything, it will cause those hordes of fans to take their anger out on someone they believe is trying to steal his legacy…  
  
**********_

_The Hernandez y Rivera family  
cordially invite you to celebrate the  
Quinceañera  
of Victoria Hernandez Rivera  
Saturday, April 20  
2-6 p.m.  
at the Rivera Hacienda_

  
  
  
April 19, 1957  
Imelda bent over the machine, wanting to finish the order for Mother Superior before the final preparations for Victoria’s quinceañera began. She was nervous enough—how would she have a proper party if there was no dancing?—and Imelda wanted to make sure everything else was perfect.  
  
She frowned. Why was there no dancing? She should be dancing with Julio. Héctor could play. He would love to play for his granddaughter. Why…?  
  
Her foot let up on the treadle. She thought she heard someone in the distance saying, “What?” but she wasn’t sure.  
  
From the shadows, her cat, Pepita, rushed over and pawed at her skirts.  
  
“Hush, little one,” she said, petting her. “What’s the trouble?”  
  
Pepita looked at her desperately, then ran back into the shadows, yowling.  
  
“Mamá Imelda?”  
  
She looked up at the sound of Héctor’s voice. He was in the courtyard, maybe.  
  
But…  
  
No. That wasn’t right.  
  
Of course it was. Héctor was in the courtyard for some reason, and he was calling her. She’d go out and they would practice to sing at Toya’s party while she danced with her favorite chambelan. She leaned over. There was so much to finish before the party. She started sewing again.  
  
“Mamá Imelda? Are you all right?”  
  
“I’m fine,” she called. “I just wanted to get these pumps finished up before we get started for the day. Mother Superior will be by and…”  
  
“It’s Miguel,” Héctor said. “Mamá Imelda, it’s Miguel.”  
  
Her shoulders went tight. She looked up. The shop shimmered around her, and she saw a shadow, a man’s shadow, Héctor’s shadow, but no. No, that wasn’t right. Héctor was gone. Héctor had never come back. She was…  
  
She stood up, looking around anxiously. The world glittered, and she saw something at her station, some strange… like a television, but it was huge and flat and all it showed was brightly colored ribbons, and the window was gone, and there was a little door that led nowhere, except a long, thin room that was full of framed lyrics—the letters, Coco’s letters—and Héctor’s guitar and…  
  
She turned. There was a tiny mirror on the wall, and she saw herself in it, not as she was, but as the young and frightened girl she was never entirely able to leave behind… and… something else… some shadow of a skull beneath her face…  
  
The shadow reached out an arm, and she thought, _It’s Miguel. Miguel has come to help._  
  
“Help me,” she whispered.  
  
Then the shimmering stopped, and she shook her head. She didn’t know any Miguel, except for a teenage boy who helped the groundskeeper at the church.  
  
She sat down again, and something thumped against the wall.  
  
Her guitar. She didn’t know why she was carrying the silly thing around. She took it off and leaned it against the wall, where the light hit it queerly, making it look like someone had taped a picture from a magazine into the corner for some reason.  
  
The girls ran in.  
  
Elena had her hair in trenzas, and looked exactly as Coco had when she was eleven—in other words, exactly like Héctor, if he’d had long hair and worn a dress. Maybe a bit stockier, from Julio’s side, but still, the face.  
  
_You look just like abuelito,_ she said.  
  
Except what came out of her mouth was, “You girls are up early.”  
  
“I want to finish my shoes,” Victoria said, running to her station. “I only have a little bit left.” She held up the fanciful pumps she and Coco had been working on for the party. They were a deep red to match her ball gown.  
  
Victoria looked like Imelda remembered looking at fifteen, if a bit better fed. Imelda knew that the chambelanes were lining up to come to the party, despite the fact that there would be no dancing. _(why is there no dancing?)_ She was the age Imelda remembered herself at best, though of course, no one had thrown a grand party for her. She had been in the orphanage still, and Héctor had played for her while she added heels to the flat shoes from the charity bin. They’d danced together in the square and he’d told people she was fifteen now and they’d congratulated her, and he’d kissed her again and again, and they had both decided that he wouldn’t come back to the orphanage with her that night. Instead, he’d clowned around and finally made a show of dunking his head into a barrel of cold water, and just for a moment, she was on the road with him, and he was shaking the water from his hair and she wanted to run to him and kiss him again, one last time, or two more, or three, but she had to…  
  
She blinked, and the world shimmered again, and Pepita jumped onto her shoulder, digging into her flesh.  
  
Then Pepita wasn’t there, and Victoria was working on her shoes again.  
  
Elena sat down. “Toya danced at Pilar’s party,” she said.  
  
“Of course she did,” Imelda said, refusing to fall for the bait. The girls liked to tease her sometimes. “It was Pilar’s party.”  
  
“I thought,” Victoria said, “that maybe… just one dance…”  
  
_Don’t be silly!_ Imelda said. _Why would you only have one dance? Dance with your chambelan, dance until dawn, dance until…_  
  
“You know the rules of the house, Toya,” she said aloud. Her eyes drifted to the guitar. Why had the girls not teased her about the guitar?  
  
There was no guitar. The guitar was wrong. It didn’t belong here. She was…  
  
…fifteen. She was fifteen, and it was nineteen-fourteen. The Rurales had been disbanded, and Huerta was going to resign, and she didn’t care about any of it, because she had spent all day with Héctor. He talked all the time as if he planned to marry her, and she believed it. She would say yes if he asked, even though they were both madly young, but they had no one else looking after them, so they might as well look after each other.  
  
But not tonight. Tonight, she’d left him in the square, where he would sleep on a bench instead of in the very close quarters at the orphanage.  
  
She was walking up the street, past the abandoned hut that used to belong to the shoemaker, before he went off to war. The summer air was sweet, and the hot, green smell of the hills beckoned her forward. It was a perfect night. She had no idea if it was even close to her real birthday—the records marked the day she had been left at the orphanage, and she had no idea when her actual birth might be celebrated—but she had always liked this day. It was the perfect day to have a birthday, not impinged upon by other holidays, with nice weather and soft skies above. And who knew? Maybe she _had_ been brought in on her fifth birthday. The sisters had told her only that her niñera had said she was “about five,” and that the boys were “nearly one.” She remembered the niñera, almost—the soft, dark skin of her arms, holding the twins while Imelda clung to her rough skirts. Once, there had been a crisp uniform, but the children had hidden in her house in the country for… how long? Three months? Four? Had it been cold when they’d left… left…  
  
But that memory was nearly gone now. The twins had no memory of any life before Santa Cecilia. Imelda remembered a grand house surrounded by flowers, and she remembered a fire, and the hot smell of gunpowder, and the impossibly loud sound as another woman had fallen to the ground before her niñera emerged from the smoke and said, “Come. Quickly. Be as still as you can, querida, and help me with the babies.” Then there had been a fiery hell and a man hanging and a woman screaming.  
  
Of the flight to the up-country, she remembered nothing, and there were only snatches of life there among the niñera’s family.  
  
_But I could go there now. I could simply step into that world and see everything. I could see Mamá and Papá if I really tried hard enough. I could go all the way back, and I could play this guitar I’m carrying while Mamá plays the piano and sings and her voice is the voice of a boozy angel and…_  
  
Guitar?  
  
She reached over her shoulder. Sure enough, there was a guitar there. She pulled it over her shoulder and looked at it. She was making a guitar for herself, and she planned to make a much better one for Héctor after she’d gotten the practice, but she didn’t have one yet. If she did, it wouldn’t be one that was this fine. It was bone white, with a black rosette inlaid with orange and purple petals, with a design of shoe lacing and stitching. A pair of mirrored “R”s was set into the headstock.  
  
Like the sign on the workshop. And on the inside of the sound box, where no one would see them, were carefully painted nomeolvides.  
  
She knew about them because he’d told her.  
  
_Who?_  
  
Miguel. Miguel had told her about the guitar when he gave it to her. It was his, and the flowers on it, the laces… they were to bind her spirit to his.  
  
But… who was Miguel?  
  
“Well, well. Look who’s out until midnight.”  
  
She looked up, and the guitar wasn’t in her hands anymore. She could feel it strapped to her back. She registered this and knew it, but it somehow didn’t matter. “Teresa.”  
  
Teresa stepped out of the shadows of the train depot. She was wearing a barely-there red dress and wobbling around on cheap heels. “You better watch out. What _will_ it do to your precious reputation if you’re out to all hours with a boy?” She laughed. “I can introduce you to more of them, you know.”  
  
_Teresa, I’m sorry,_ Imelda tried to say. _I should have watched out for you better. I should have helped you instead of yelling at you. Come back to the orphanage, and we can get your life back on track, you’re a smart girl, and you can do better…_  
  
But what came out of her mouth was, “I bet you could introduce me to a hundred. Or is that too low an estimate these days?”  
  
“At least I _get_ something for it.”  
  
_I didn’t mean that. I meant that I should have told you_ why _I didn’t trust Ernesto. I should have gone with you that night and if he tried anything, I should have left him a soprano. I knew what he was like. I sang in the tavern and I watched him work. But I just told you no and didn’t tell you why and_  
  
“Oh, please, Teresa, all you get is social diseases.”  
  
She started to walk, and Teresa fell in beside her. She wanted to take the other girl’s hand and run back into town, or back into the train station. She’d give a her a new dress and train ticket to somewhere that she’d be allowed to be normal again and…  
  
“You know, I don’t even know if Héctor _likes_ girls. Ernesto offered him a few the other day, when they were singing at the inn. You’d think he was smelling rotten meat.” She snorted. “Of course, you don’t have to worry. You’re half a man, anyway.”  
  
This stung, as Teresa had known it would, and the desire to say anything conciliatory went away. She didn’t know where it had come from, anyway. “Half a man is better than less than half a lady.”  
  
“You think you’re so much better. Doña Imelda, lady of the house. Maybe you would have been. But you’re nothing more than the rest of us now.”  
  
“I never said I was any different—”  
  
“You don’t have to. You just stick that pretty little nose in the air and—”  
  
And the world swam again, and she was small, and she had a new dress, frilly and pink, for the twins’ baptism. She’d spent twenty minutes running along the rows of hibiscus flowers, and Mamá was frowning at her impressively. Ladies did not run. Ladies were meant to be quiet and still. Mamá was standing between Imelda’s niñera and the new one that they’d brought in for the twins. Each of the nurses held one of the twins. Mamá didn’t hold them often, and didn’t like it when Imelda wanted to. That was a job for a hireling. But Imelda liked to sing to Oscar and Felipe, and hold them and rock them. She would sing at the baptism today. Mamá said it was all right to sing in church. It was only when Imelda had gone down to the fields and started singing to the workers and clowning and making them laugh that she had been upset and said that singing for other people wasn’t ladylike. Ladies _could_ sing in church. Imelda had been practicing, and she had her guitar…  
  
She was too small for a guitar.  
  
She couldn’t play one.  
  
But it was there. It was on her shoulders even as Papá grabbed her by the upper arm and said, “Your mother told you to stop running, Imelda. You’ve half-spoiled your dress as it is.”  
  
She looked up. He was impossibly big, dressed in a sharp suit, with a gunbelt slung across his hips even though he was going to mass. He didn’t slow down as he marched her through the edge of the hibiscus field and up onto the steps of the tiny church. He rushed her through a small crowd of the workers who were usually in the fields, and she looked up at them and saw that they hated her. They hated her Papá. She wanted to say, “Papá, you must stop this, you must be kinder,” but all she could do was cry until she was deposited in front of Mamá, who was wearing dark green silk and carrying a parasol. She crouched down and wiped Imelda’s face with a lace kerchief and said, “Ladies do not carry on like this, mija.”  
  
And then it was night and the world was on fire, and she was running through the hibiscus fields again, carrying Oscar while the niñera carried Felipe. She was too small to run with the baby, but she told herself, _I can do this. I won’t drop my brother,_ and she didn’t drop him. He was crying, but no one could hear him, because behind them, the fire was roaring, and Mamá was screaming, and something horrible was hanging from a wooden frame, and the men were building another frame, and she could still hear their hammers ringing in the night… thud… thud…  
  
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she was in the old shoemaker’s shack, and Héctor was trying to get the cabinets to hang right, but he had no knack for it. She couldn’t very well climb ladders at this particularly wobbly stage of her pregnancy, though, so the repairs were up to him if she wanted them made, and she did, because they would make a perfect home out of this rickety old building that he’d gotten for a song, and all of the children would grow up here, and their daughter would dance with him on her fifteenth birthday, with the brand new heels she had made—  
  
—and the roof was leaking in the orphanage again, and no one else ever bothered to help. While Coco played a mindless fortune telling game with one of the little girls, Imelda climbed the ladder and started nailing cured leather over the hole. She would find lumber tomorrow, when the rain stopped.  
  
“Imelda, thank you,” Sister Teresa said. “I only meant to ask for a tarp, not to have you run all the way up here.”  
  
_It’s all right. It was something like home once, hermana._  
  
“Of course not. You couldn’t think of anyone else to beg. Maybe you want me to throw in some old umbrella of Héctor’s, too.”  
  
“I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have asked.”  
  
_No, you were right. I should have listened. You were right and he’s gone and it’s not his fault, and…_  
  
“Not that _that_ ever stopped you.”  
  
“It’s true. My mouth runs faster than my brain. I’m sorry. You weren’t ready—”  
  
“Oh, so it’s _my_ fault. _I_ just need to grow up and start handing out my husband’s things. I should have. I should have done it the minute I realized what the son of a bitch had done. I should have thrown it into the street whether the poor wanted it or not.”  
  
“But you didn’t. Why didn’t you?”  
  
“I’m not giving you my confession, Teresa.”  
  
“This business about throwing away all the instruments, and the music… Imelda, you shouldn’t. You love music.”  
  
“Hand me three more nails.”  
  
“And how will it be for Coco? She always had Héctor’s ear. She loves dancing. And she writes adorable little rhymes. She sings them to herself when she thinks no one is listening. She made up a whole little corrido about a dragon and a prince and a little country girl who has to go fight him.”  
  
“The prince or the dragon?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Was she fighting the prince or the dragon?”  
  
“The dragon, Imelda. Don’t be ridiculous.”  
  
“Well, I’ll have to remind her that writing poems isn’t going to keep a roof over her head any more than it ever kept a roof over Héctor’s.”  
  
“Songs.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Not poems. Songs. She writes songs.”  
  
“She’s seven years old. Even if you want to call the poems _lyrics_ , they’re still not songs.” Imelda pounded three more nails into the leather, and it stopped the worst of the leak, though it was already seeping in along the edges. “And I’ll thank you to not interfere with my daughter.”  
  
“Maybe I can go find Ernesto and ask him. He’s doing movies now, with Antonio Duras. I saw one just before…”  
  
“Oh, I see _that_ ending well.”  
  
“Imelda…”  
  
“Just stay away from it, Teresa. I don’t need your help.”  
  
Teresa fell silent, and Imelda jumped down off the ladder. It wasn’t ladylike, and she knew that, if any of the orphans reported it, she’d be gossiped about again, but she was only twenty-five. She could make the occasional jump if it seemed convenient.  
  
“Coco!” she called. “Coco, come now. We need to go home before it gets any later.”  
  
“But we were telling the future!” Coco said, drawing away from her playmate. “We’re all going to get married and have babies and there will be a handsome prince, and I’ll become like Joan of Arc, and have swordfights and…”  
  
“…and I’m going to have games,” Toya said, polishing her shoe in a bar of bright light, “and lots of food, and we don’t need dancing to have a good party! I told Pilar, we’re going to have a _Rivera_ party, and maybe there’s no dancing, but that just means we’ll be more creative. We can play cards, and maybe… some kind of ball game… Or a foot race.”  
  
“In a ball gown and heels?” Imelda asked.  
  
“That’s what makes it fun, Abuelita.” She grinned. “You should play with us.”  
  
_Or you could dance, and Papá Héctor and I will play for you, like we’re supposed to._  
  
“Oh, I don’t think so. I’m a bit old for that.”  
  
Toya laughed. “We have some big high heels, don’t we? We could make the boys run in them. I bet all the girls would win the race.”  
  
“I’d be hearing about it for a long time if the sons of our fine ladies and gentlemen were running around my house in ladies’ shoes.”  
  
“But they’d like it!” Toya laughed and finished polishing her left shoe. She picked up the right. “Besides, it was Chago Valdez’s idea. _He_ thinks he could run faster than I can in heels. Ha.”  
  
Imelda grinned. “Well… it’s not like our reputation is spotless. They already think we’re crazy. Why not?”  
  
The girls giggled, and Victoria got up and hugged her. “I love you, Abuelita.”  
  
“You, too, mija. I’ll find the biggest shoes I can. Should I loosen the heels?”  
  
“No. I can win fair.”  
  
“What’s going on?” Héctor asked. Imelda looked over her shoulder, but she couldn’t see him.  
  
“It’s just a little game,” she said. “Toya wants to have some fun for her quinceañera.”  
  
“Mamá Imelda, where are you?”  
  
“What do you mean? I’m right…”   
  
But the shop shimmered, and the girls were gone. Again, she saw the glowing flat screen that might have been a television, if it had been showing something more interesting than ribbons. Pepita was sitting beside it, and she leapt down, latching her claws into Imelda’s skirt and tugging at her furiously.  
  
Imelda frowned. It wasn’t her work skirt. It was the purple gown she’d gotten married in, and it was cinched so tightly, and her hands were…  
  
She stared.  
  
Her finger bones seemed to glow, her wedding ring resting on one of them. Miguel had left them the rings the year after the police in Mexico City had released the evidence from de la Cruz’s mansion, two years after he’d… visited… in…  
  
“Héctor?” she called. “Héctor?”  
  
“Mamá Imelda,” a voice said, and she looked across the room. Miguel was standing in a patch of early dawn light, his guitar—the one he’d given her as an offering, the one that was on her back now—held loosely in one hand. His ridiculously long hair (it was actually past his shoulders) was gleaming reddish in the sunrise. He squinted blindly toward her.  
  
“Mi… Miguel?” she said.  
  
“Yes! Mamá Imelda, it’s me. I think I see… You shouldn’t be here. I’ll help you get home.”  
  
“Miguel, I can’t… where… when…”  
  
“I don’t know how. I need to find a way. Stay close to me. Stay close to Pepita and Dante.”  
  
“I keep moving… Miguel… I can’t stay…”  
  
The light changed. There was a soft mew from somewhere above, and she spotted the kitten, the tiny little black and white kitten that she’d seen earlier, in the square.  
  
“Oh, it’s all right,” she said. “Mamá Imelda will give you something to eat, poor thing. And Coco will be very happy to have a little kitten…”  
  
And she fell back into the past.


	13. Chapter 13

_From Facebook.  
MIGUEL RIVERA [verified]  
2027, November 2  
**The Real Rivera**  
Please check the video below.  
  
Comments  
**Cissy Grand** [Top Fan] Hey, mods, can we ban the first person to say “Stockholm Syndrome”?  
  
**Toni Taibo** So far, that’s you, Cissy Grand.  
  
**Cissy Grand** [Top Fan] You know what I mean.  
  
**Maya Fenestra** [Top Fan] I think he was under pressure to say all that. I mean, families can be crazy.  
  
**Toni Taibo** I imagine being internationally slandered would tend to exert pressure.  
  
**Anna Johnson** I’ve worked with children from abusive families. It’s not unusual for them to defend their abusers.  
  
**Toni Taibo** Banhammer in five… four… three…  
  
**********  
15 CRAZY CONSPIRACY THEORIES FROM OTHER PEOPLE (FOR ONCE)  
from NewsOfTheNorth.com, October 2026  
Just to reassure you that you’re not living in the country most consumed by insane conspiracy theories (well, maybe you are, but we’re sure not the ONLY ones), here are a few wacky theories from around the world that put the Kardashian Konspiracy to shame—though, to be fair, none of them involve extra-terrestrial overlords speaking through cosmetic implants.  
  
15\. Mexico: Ernesto de la Cruz—Murderer. To be fair, this one at least has _some _rational thought behind it, though it’s fuzzy. Movie star De la Cruz was in fact in possession of the guitar once owned by his former partner, Héctor Rivera, who disappeared, and was later found murdered, and there’s good reason to believe he stole Rivera’s songs without proper compensation. No one argues for the man’s sainthood. But the wild story spun by the Rivera descendants—with help from noted music conspiratologist Carlos Navarro (who has authored five subsequent books about other stars who turn out to be tarnished) and cowboy detective Dionisio Calles (who recently created an international incident by putting an American citizen in the hospital when he was found assisting Salvadoran refugees)—is insane. They posit that de la Cruz, for reasons known only to him, chose to murder his partner in order to use songs that he had full access to, in an era when copyright wasn’t exactly rigorously enforced. It’s true that Rivera died by poison, which generated the idea, but if there’s evidence that it was administered by de la Cruz, rather than having been ingested months after they parted ways, it has yet to be presented. But at least that could be understood—it’s a working theory that at least doesn’t defy logic and reality. Where it gets insane is that locals claim the Riveras never pursued this line of thought until after young Miguel Rivera (yes,_ that _one) got lost on Día de los Muertos, and came back supposedly with knowledge he couldn’t have, which is what led them to the discovery of the body. Get it? The Riveras were_ told by ghosts _about the murder of their ancestor…_  
  
The guitar was Teto’s idea.  
  
Miguel hadn’t noticed the boys’ door open when he followed the alebrijes across the courtyard to the workshop, but apparently, Teto had barely been asleep, and he’d heard the commotion. When Miguel had turned around after hearing Mamá Imelda say “Help me,” Teto had been standing at the workshop door, wide-eyed.  
  
“It’s a… ghost?” he whispered.  
  
Miguel, unable to think of any alternate explanation—he hadn’t gotten much sleep—said, “Yes. I think… Mamá Imelda.”  
  
Teto went very pale and bit his lip, then said, very fast, “Coco says I shouldn’t be afraid of ghosts. She says they don’t hurt us and they’re just family.”  
  
“She’s right.” Miguel went to his brother and scooped him up, cuddling him. “But it’s okay to be a little scared, if that’s how you feel. Whatever you feel is okay. It’s weird. And I… I’m not sure what’s going on with Mamá Imelda. I’m kind of scared _for_ her.”  
  
“Maybe she couldn’t get to the magic bridge.”  
  
This struck Miguel as all too likely. He’d heard warnings about being back before dawn as he crossed the plaza at Marigold Grand Central. “I think…maybe…”  
  
Teto frowned, thinking hard. “Can we see her? I want to meet Mamá Imelda!”  
  
“I saw her in the mirror. Did you see anything?”  
  
“Just the sewing machine.” Teto slid down and walked around, hands on his hips, a tiny parody of Rosa trying to solve a problem. “I know! You can talk to her. She can tell you how to make her stop sewing and stuff.”  
  
“I’m not sure. I don’t know if… She might not know.”  
  
“Your magic guitar!”  
  
“Teto…”  
  
“Your special one with her eyes on it and the marigolds and stuff.”  
  
Miguel smiled. “I thought Papá Héctor’s guitar was the magic one.”  
  
“That’s magic for Papá Héctor,” Teto said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “But you made a magic one for Mamá Imelda.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He ran to Miguel’s room.   
  
While he was gone, Miguel heard a brief tapping sound from the workshop, faint and far away, and gone by the time Teto returned with the guitar, hugging it by the body so the neck stuck up over his head. He was walking carefully, so he wouldn’t trip, but Miguel took it quickly anyway.  
  
Teto, panting a little bit from the exertion, said, “There. Now you can talk.”  
  
“I don’t know how. How do I talk?”  
  
“I don’t know. You’re the one who can talk to ghosts.”  
  
“Is that another superpower I forgot about?”  
  
“Coco says it’s really true,” Teto said, with a tone of finality in his voice that he might have adopted to cite an angel’s endorsement of God.  
  
There was no arguing the point. Miguel did talk to Papá Héctor, every year, but that was when the bridge was there, when the realms were connected. There were sometimes other dreams, but he was never as sure of them, and he didn’t know how to force one.  
  
_But you do. You called Papá Héctor, that first year. You called him by playing, and he didn’t even have his guitar yet. Teto’s right. You know._  
  
He looked down at the guitar. The strap—a hand-tooled band of leather that Mamá Elena had made for him—was hanging loose beside it. The instrument itself glimmered faintly in the early morning sunlight, the marigold petals around the rosette making burning bridges over the cool violet petals.   
  
It couldn’t be magic. He remembered making every piece of it. It was wood and paint and lacquer and, on the inside, a dried and pressed forget-me-not worked into the reverse side of the rosette. He’d shaped the pieces, and sweated over the measurements, and even bought the lumber from a dusty old warehouse in the capital that had been filled with mote-specked sunlight and smelled of sweet, aging wood. He had bent over its pieces for hours, pouring himself into it, and _he_ wasn’t magic, so how could _this_ be?  
  
And yet, Mamá Imelda had poured her own sweat and soul into the guitar she’d made for Papá Héctor. She’d given herself splinters and focused on the shapes and sounds until her head ached like she had guitar strings pulled taut in her eye sockets. The pieces of it had once been lumber that she’d bought, probably in an even less magical place than the one where Miguel had bought his own.  
  
He took a deep breath and put the instrument over his shoulder. “What should I sing? Poco Loco? That’s one of hers.  It was for her.” But he knew better. Hadn’t he woken up just two days ago with the right song in his head? He picked the first few notes from memory, then sang, “De colores… de colores se visten los campos en la primavera…”  
  
He didn’t know _why_ that old saw was the right song, but he knew that it had been on her mind.  
  
For a moment, it was dark, and he was on the road that led up to the hills, and there was someone beside him. It wasn’t now. Mamá Imelda wasn’t wandering around modern Santa Cecilia. She was… ago… she was _young_.  
  
Then he lost the thread of it. He sighed. Pepita was sitting by the computer, glaring at him.  
  
“Did it work?” Teto asked.  
  
“No. Well, yes, but no. I couldn’t hold on. Do you know that song, Teto?”  
  
“Sure. I hear it all the time from the mariachis.”  
  
“Can you sing it? Just keep singing while I… I don’t know. It’s not playing. That’s not where Mamá Imelda and I connect.”  
  
“Okay.” Teto pulled himself up on the old, battered blue table where Tía Gloria’s sewing machine sat, and sang in a quiet, very pretty voice, “De colores…”  
  
Miguel listened to him for a long moment, trying to find his way. It was easy to picture Teto like a young Papá Héctor. They looked alike, and Teto’s missing tooth made the connection even easier for Miguel to make. He tried to cast himself into his own past, not far, just five years. He was in another workshop, the old luthier Dominguez casting an occasional glance over, but mostly leaving him alone in the near trance he’d been in while he worked. He traced the neck of the guitar, the curve as it went into the headstock, the place where it met the body. He remembered thinking then about this workshop, about shoes, and how they’d needed to be perfect on the inside if they were going to be worth anything and…  
  
He heard laughing.  
  
It was faint, almost inaudible. Girls laughing in high, sweet voices, then, _I love you, Abuelita_.  
  
_You, too, mija. I’ll find the biggest shoes I can. Should I loosen the heels?_  
  
_No. I can win fair._  
  
He looked in the direction of the voices, toward the station that had once been Mamá Imelda’s, and he could almost see. He felt like, if he closed his eyes, there would be afterimages of the figures. Mamá Imelda. Two girls.  
  
“What’s going on?” he asked.  
  
And she answered. “It’s just a little game. Toya wants to have some fun for her quinceañera.”  
  
Miguel did close his eyes now, and the room opened up around him, brighter now, later in the morning (though not by much). He could see the shadows of the two girls on the floor, running around the workshop. And at the sewing machine, a form, gaining solidity, the light glimmering on her bones.  
  
“Mamá Imelda, where are you?”  
  
“What do you mean?” The figure clarified more. He could see Mamá Imelda’s face now, both the skeletal form and the form he knew from old photographs, superimposed on one another. “I’m right…” Pepita jumped down from the table and ran over to her mistress, tugging at her dress. She did not regain her form from the Land of the Dead, but she took on a blue and green sheen.   
  
Mamá Imelda’s eyes widened and she looked down at her hands, then her purple dress. “Héctor?” she called frantically. “Héctor?”  
  
“Mamá Imelda,” Miguel said, but couldn’t think of how to follow it. They stared at each other across a strange, shifting world.  
  
“Mi… Miguel?” she said.  
  
“Yes! Mamá Imelda, it’s me. I think I see… You shouldn’t be here. I’ll help you get home.”  
  
“Miguel, I can’t… where… when…” The workshop flickered, and Mamá Imelda became a young woman, even a girl, but her eyes seemed wider than they were on the far side of the bridge.  
  
Miguel bit his lip. “I don’t know how. I need to find a way. Stay close to me. Stay close to Pepita and Dante.”  
  
She shook her head. “I keep moving… Miguel… I can’t stay…”   
  
Then there was one final flicker, and the workshop was quiet except for Teto’s voice.  
  
Miguel looked at him. “Did you hear anything?”  
  
He stopped singing. “Just you.”  
  
“Could you do me a favor, Tetito? Could you wake up Papá and ask him to come here?”  
  
Teto flung himself down from the table, stretching his arms out as he flew, then landed softly and ran for the bedrooms.  
  
Miguel sat down at Mamá Imelda’s spot, trying to feel her there with him, but unable to. He touched the guitar. Nothing happened.  
  
If she was stuck here—and he believed it—then he had to do something. But he couldn’t even think where to begin.  
  
_Before it’s too late._  
  
He thought bitterly of his last day in Salzburg, of the time he’d wasted trying to sort out ephemera.  
  
_And what else were you going to do?_ a voice asked in his head. He knew it was one of his own, but, to his comfort, it was the one that spoke in Mamá Imelda’s voice. _Do you imagine you could have known you ought to be studying exorcisms?_  
  
He smiled.  
  
It wouldn’t have made a difference, and he _had_ returned when he needed to be here.  
  
But the sense of horrible dread—of unbearable guilt—didn’t leave him. All of this was tied up, somehow—he knew it—to the dangerous, wandering path his life had taken.  
  
Teto came back with Papá and Mamá, both of them in bathrobes and old slippers, a minute later. Neither of them looked sleepy; it was almost time for the family to start getting up anyway.  
  
“What is it?” Papá asked.  
  
“We have a problem,” Miguel said. He did his best to explain what had happened and what he thought it meant.  
  
By the time he was finished, his parents had sunk down at their work stations. Mamá kept looking over at Mamá Imelda’s machine. She was frowning, but not frightened.  
  
“Mamá?”  
  
She shrugged. “I don’t mind ghosts. I grew up on the edge of the cemetery, and I always thought there were a few. But it doesn’t sound safe for her to stay. And… well, I’m sure if I’d gone a hundred years without Papá, I wouldn’t want to be away from him for long.” She reached across and squeezed Papá’s hand.  
  
Miguel, caught up in the mechanics of the situation, hadn’t thought about that aspect, and he felt a real stab of guilt. “Right. So… I need to figure out how to get her back. I need to…” He looked at Teto, not really wanting to point out that he needed to do something that might be dangerous, but Teto had apparently already figured things out.  
  
“Miguel needs to go to ghost-world again!” he said. “Can I come this time? I want to meet everyone. Coco does, too.” He nodded at the door, where Coco was, indeed, standing, blinking solemnly.  
  
“I want to help Mamá Imelda,” she said, and looked accusingly at Teto. “Why didn’t you get me?”  
  
“Miguel said Mamá and Papá.”  
  
Miguel considered pointing out that he’d only said “Papá,” but decided to let it be. “There’s nothing you can do, Coquis. Or you, Teto. I don’t even know what _I’m_ supposed to do. The bridge isn’t there.”  
  
“What about a cenote?” Coco asked, coming in and sitting on Papá’s lap. “You could swim down in a cenote like the Mayas and—”  
  
“No,” Mamá said. “Socorro, it’s dangerous to swim in underground caves, and we don’t know that your brother would come out on the other side.  And we aren’t Mayas, so who knows if it would work for us?” She did not add _At least not without dying to get there_ , but Miguel saw the words in her deep eyes just the same.  
  
“We could get all the marigolds,” Teto suggested. “And make a whole new bridge.”  
  
“I don’t think it works that way.”  
  
“Dante and Pepita are here. They could fly her back!”  
  
“But they’re the ones who came to get me. I don’t think…”  
  
But they were off. Miguel looked at his parents. Papá kissed Coco’s head as she slid off his lap and started pacing as she talked, then shrugged. Mamá smiled.  
  
None of the ideas seemed workable.  
  
The rest of the family started drifting in over the next half hour, and—with the exception of a moment when the sound of a hammer on a heel distracted everyone—they talked over one another, trying to think of anything they could do. Mamá Elena went to the sewing machine and stared at it, as if she hoped it would start again. She reached into the space where Mamá Imelda would have sat, and Miguel realized that one of the shadows he’d seen had been hers, dancing around her beloved grandmother. He went to her and gave her a hug. She squeezed his hand and smiled.  
  
“The Aztecs used to celebrate for a whole month,” Rosa said. “Maybe we _could_ do it, if they were right.”  
  
“They celebrated in August,” Tía Gloria said. “If we were on their calendar, it would be a lot warmer right now.”  
  
“Another thing to thank the Spaniards for…”  
  
“Hey!”   
  
Miguel looked up. Abel’s wife, Serafina, was holding up her hand.  
  
“I have an idea,” she said.  
  
“It’s pretty good,” Abel agreed. “At least I’ve heard of it, too.”  
  
Into the moderate quiet, the ring of the hammer came again. They waited for it to stop.  
  
“Cerro Gordo,” she said. “Near Miahuatlán. My brothers used to tell me ghost stories about it. There’s a cave. This hunter went into it, or maybe he was a farmer, or… it doesn’t matter. He went with his dog, but it started to rain, so the hunter—or whatever he was—went into a cave in the hill, and after it stopped raining, the dog kept howling and howling for him, but he never came out, and no one ever found him. They say the caves might go all the way to Tlacolula. But they also say maybe they go somewhere… else. They say that sometimes, you can still hear the dog trying to find him.”  
  
“That doesn’t sound much safer than swimming in a cenote,” Papá said. “Anyone could get lost in there. The Carrancistas hid weapons in there, too. Who knows who’s hiding things now? It’s… you may not be the only person in the cave.”  
  
The family was silent.  
  
Then Dante barked.  
  
Miguel looked over at him. He’d been silent through most of the conversation, but now he was sitting up eagerly, tongue lolling out of his mouth. Pepita was sitting between his front legs, looking up anxiously.  
  
“I’d have guides,” he said.  
  
“And it doesn’t need to be Cerro Gordo.”  
  
Miguel turned around.   
  
Papá Franco was hobbling over, leaning on his cane. “I know about Cerro Gordo, and it’s a good bet, but it’s not the only cave in Oaxaca. Why would we go all the way to Miahuatlán to find our way home? There are caves in our own hills, right here in Santa Cecilia. I played in them when I was a boy.”  
  
“I never heard of ghosts in them, though,” Serafina said, though she cast her eyes down and adopted a deferential posture.  
  
He patted her wrist. “Every cave has a ghost somewhere. Just like every hotel.”  
  
“Hotels,” Mamá said. “That sounds safer. “We’ll check you into a hotel. You can just look around.”  
  
Miguel laughed. “I have a feeling it will be harder than that.”  
  
“What exactly do you mean to do?” Papá asked. “Are you… planning to curse yourself again?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Miguel said. “I haven’t really had time to figure anything out. I hoped someone else would have an idea.”  
  
But no one did.  
  
For a moment, Miguel pictured himself crossing the bridge again, seeing the light bursting from inside the marigold petals. He saw Papá Héctor waiting for him under the never-ending neon spires of the city. In a moment of total recall, he saw his scuffed boots on the cobblestone walkways, felt the pleasant, unmoving air around him. Alebrijes swooped through the air and…  
  
He looked down at Dante and Pepita. “I think I need to let them show me.”  
  
“I don’t like this, Miguel.”  
  
“I’ll be okay. I was okay before. I’ll be okay again.”  
  
“Can I come?” Coco asked, coming over with her guitar in her hand.  
  
“No,” Miguel and Papá answered together.  
  
“But if Miguel would be okay, I’d be okay.” She looked at him solemnly. “You _are_ going to be okay, right?”  
  
“Yes. But… let’s not worry Mamá and Papá more than we need to, all right?”  
  
She frowned. “I want to meet them someday.”  
  
“You will, but let’s keep it a long time in the future.”  
  
She gave him a mistrustful look, but went back to Teto, who was wide-eyed, his head tipped to one side, listening for something.  
  
“I’m still not all right with this,” Papá said quietly.  
  
“I’ll be careful. Make sure they don’t try to follow.”  
  
He nodded.  
  
Miguel went over to Teto. “Do you hear something, hermanito?”  
  
“I did. There was singing. It was pretty.”  
  
Miguel wondered what moment Mamá Imelda had returned to. They’d lived in these little rooms during the happier days of their marriage. Once, the rooms would have been as full of music as they were of shoemaking.  
  
“Teto, Coco… will you sing, while I’m gone? Not all the time, just… If I’m not back for dinner, sing me something. And if I’m not back at bedtime, sing me something. Count some blessings. And…”  
  
“And in the morning?” Teto asked.  
  
He nodded.  
  
“Miguel, this is insane,” Mamá said. “You can’t just go back and forth. There’s a gap for a reason.”  
  
“I know.” The sewing machine started up. “And she’s on the wrong side of it.”  
  
Mamá closed her eyes. “Miguel, I know you love them. But I love you. And I don’t want you to go off and deliberately try to… What is it you’re going to do?”  
  
“I need to find out. That’s all. They won’t let anything happen to me.”  
  
“There’s only one night for a _reason_. People could cross once, but the sacrifices they made to do it…”  
  
“No one is going to ask me for a sacrifice.” He took her hands. “Mamá, please. I think this is why I came home.”  
  
She didn’t quite look at him, but she nodded.  
  
“I’ll be all right. If nothing else, Mamá Imelda will put a stop to it if I’m in any trouble. I have Dante _and_ Pepita to guide me. And you know how to keep the path home open. You’re the one who taught me.” He took her hand. “Mamá… can I have your blessing?”  
  
She nodded again. “You always have my blessing, mijo. Always.”  
  
Dante gave a sharp bark.  
  
Miguel took a deep breath. “All right. I’m going to see where Dante leads me.” He looked up. The family was watching. “I may be back right away. For one thing, if he wants to lead me to Cerro Gordo, I need a car.”  
  
This got a laugh, and Papá Franco tossed him the keys to the shop truck. He put them in his pocket, though he had a feeling that Papá Franco was right: They wouldn’t be going to Miahuatlán.  
  
Miguel put his guitar over his shoulder, then knelt down and ran a finger over Pepita’s head. “Get Mamá Imelda to come wherever I go, all right? Can you do that?”  
  
Pepita ran into a shadow under the sewing table. When Miguel tried to follow her progress, she was gone.  
  
“Okay, Dante,” he said. “Let’s see where we’re going.”  
  
Dante bolted out the front door of the shop, barely waiting for Miguel to follow. By the time he managed to get through the family’s well-wishes and cautions, the dog was already most of the way down to the old train depot, far enough away that the patterned shirt he wore could once again be his skin.  
  
Miguel ran to catch up, ignoring the painted drunkards still celebrating on the park benches, even as one rolled over and said, in English, “Hey, it’s Miguel Rivera!”  
  
Dante ran up the road that led into the hills, pausing here and there to sniff marigold petals that were still out. Miguel—starting to wish he’d brought his motorcycle along—was almost out of breath when they turned off into the weedy lot where he’d come with Papá Franco a few days ago… the place that was once the garden of the orphanage. The old, crumbling building was just ahead.  
  
He guessed he wasn’t surprised.  
  
Dante went to the front steps and nosed at a loose board while Miguel caught his breath, then (apparently deciding that Miguel had rested long enough), took a vague nip at his sleeve to pull him along further.  
  
The hills started properly just beyond the edge of the property.  
  
Miguel had been here before, sometimes on his own to enjoy the view, sometimes hiking with Rosa or with friends from school. He’d seen some caves before, but not the one Dante led him to.  
  
It was hidden neatly in the folds of the hill, in a pool of wild marigolds. It didn’t look big enough to crawl into, but Miguel knew that it was.  
  
Dante barked cheerfully, then crouched down on his belly and crawled inside.  
  
Miguel followed.


	14. Interlude 1: The Land of the Dead

 

**Interlude 1: The Land of the Dead**

  
  
_FROM_ NO APOLOGIES: AN AUTOMORTOGRAPHY _  
by Ernesto de la Cruz  
March, 2027  
The things people want to know about now… I wonder what has become of the world sometimes. My childhood. The politics of my home town. Even my preferences in the bedroom! In my day, talking about things like that was rude. Well, you might be able to get away with politics, if you agreed with the prevailing winds of public opinion. But I rarely did, so I did not often speak. In fact, I didn’t care about the rantings of the rich men or the revolutionaries, no matter how many of them originated in my home state. When has it ever mattered which greedy lunatic was in charge? As to my childhood, it was dull, if punctuated by occasional scoldings from my father, who made rather liberal use of his belt when he was displeased with me, at least until I was big enough to snatch it away from him. What passed in my bedroom, I shall keep to myself, and to those with whom I shared it on occasion. None of it has bearing on the matters under discussion, I assure you…  
  
FROM _THE SHATTERED BELL: A NEW STUDY OF ERNESTO DE LA CRUZ _  
by Jésus Varela  
2027  
The private parties thrown by Ernesto de la Cruz were legendary, and rumored to be attended by every high-roller in the Mexico City film scene, as well as politicians and the wealthy of all stripes. Of course, this generated rumors among those not invited about many forms of debauchery, but the records of those who actually attended simply testify to high-spirited fun, if often of an adult variety. There were movie premieres, and producer Esteban Durante told of a secret parody that de la Cruz and a few regular members of his coterie had made, skewering many political figures, certain dubious alliances, and (most damning, probably) the rural towns of de la Cruz’s youth. No copies of this parody have surfaced, despite the thorough search of the property, so it is likely that the evidence was destroyed soon after the party in question. As to romance, his public reputation as a serial heartbreaker is hardly surprising. It was expected of men at the time. Privately, he retained very few long-term relationships…   
  
LOST TRAVELER ALERTS  
from Más Alla, November 2, 2027  
As always, we reminded people to return before sunrise on Día de los Muertos. But each year, there are casualties. The Department of Family Reunions has no answers about where such lost travelers are, though some have returned—please do not panic. Some are returned by exorcism in the Land of the Living, though this may have lasting impact on their memories. This year, we are sorry to report the disappearance of Maya Lunes, Andre Villanueva, Ana Lucero, and Imelda Rivera.  
  
Imelda Rivera has been in the news in recent weeks…_  
  
The bridge to and from Odiados, the neighborhood in the Land of the Dead where the hated were trapped, wasn’t a confection of glowing marigold petals. There were petals involved somewhere, of course—there always were—but what it seemed like to Ernesto was an ugly orange hallway, with dirty yellow linoleum on the floor, gouged here and there and peeling up at the corners. Instead of golden light bubbling up from below, a kind of sickly sludge squirted between the tiles. He trudged back along it with the others.  The age in Odiados was a bit younger than in the rest of the Land, and the wild youths would not have been his chosen companions. One of them had apparently been left a huge gun on someone’s ofrenda, and as he exited the hallway into the dull, greenish light of the square, he pointed at the sky and shot a long, loud arc of bullets. What he thought he was going to shoot here was a mystery, though the thing was heavy enough to use as a club.  
  
Ernesto himself had a manuscript from young Varela, whose ear he’d whispered into for the last three years. His first crossings had been maddening, but he’d finally found a few angry young people who detested Miguel for being young, talented, and successful, and Varela had been the real gold mine among them. He was a diligent history scholar who loathed the past, and viewed his studies as “knowing the enemy.” He was an effective, evocative writer who wanted to evoke the rage he felt at the emptiness of the world these days.  
  
And he was a fan of Ernesto de la Cruz.  
  
Ernesto wasn’t entirely sure why, and it didn’t matter. Varela believed firmly that Ernesto was being unfairly maligned, convicted without a trial of a crime that they had only the scantest evidence had even occurred. And if it had occurred, there was even less evidence that Ernesto had committed it. And if he _had_ committed it, there was probably a deeper reason than a few song rights. It was probably all engineered by those exploitative, money-grubbing Riveras (in the midst of a poverty-stricken state, they created luxury shoes for foreigners instead of… something).   
  
He hadn’t read the manuscript yet, but Varela, getting steadily drunker as he lectured his adoring young girlfriend, had said, “Of course he covered things up. It would have been second nature. His father’s grandmother was half-black, you know… his mother would never admit that, and the studio would have hidden it at all costs. The castas, you know. It must have been difficult for him.” (Ernesto had never actually known this about his bisabuela, who had died before he was born. Of course, he wasn’t sure his parents would have known it either. The only story he’d ever heard was a vague story from his mother about an ancestor who’d served on a cabildo in Santa Cecilia. His father had been a soldier in Diaz’s army in the ‘80s, but he hadn’t told many stories at all.) “And his father was abusive,” Varela added impressively. “De la Cruz spoke often about having the belt taken to him.”  
  
“Didn’t everyone use the belt back then?”  
  
“And that makes it okay? That means that children were less scarred by it?”  
  
“But he wouldn’t have had to cover it up. And… well, he did talk about it, if he… talked about it often…”  
  
“Depends on what he was hit for…”  
  
This swerved into a conversation about Ernesto’s sexual habits, which irritated him. He had done his best to dissuade Varela from including much of his speculation, but he wouldn’t know until he read the thing how effective that had been. If he could go back in time and change one thing about that night, it would be to stop himself from shoving the damned chorizo down Héctor’s throat.   
  
He’d stayed there until midnight, then drifted back to the mansion, now practically a museum to Héctor and Imelda. Varela’s publicity was starting to be effective, though. He heard a lot of the living saying things like, “I hear she was a real puta” and “Poor Rivera… stuck between those two!” The dead were whispering that Héctor and Imelda had actually put in a personal appearance earlier, but no one seemed to know why. They’d moved on to Santa Cecilia long before Ernesto arrived.  
  
He’d tried to get back to the marigold bridge, to lead him anywhere other than Odiados, but he had no luck. He’d reached a bus station and seen a nun’s ghost trying to sit with an obliviously weeping girl. The nun looked up and called, “Nesto?” and he knew who it was. He ducked back into the shadows before she could start lecturing him on atonement. She’d already sent him five letters on the theme, carried by a chirpy alebrije. Those had stopped when he’d sent one back telling her that if it showed up again, he’d send it back to her headless.  
  
His wanderings had led him nowhere near the real bridges, and every time he spotted a path back, it ultimately turned into this dreary hallway.  
  
He had only used the marigold bridge once—that first year after he’d died, he’d gone over to check on his estate. He’d read that the studio had used some kind of legal alchemy to claim it. He didn’t mind, but he wanted to make sure they were handling it properly. They seemed to be doing fine, at least back then. Fans overran the place, but they weren’t breaking anything. His body had still been there (the mausoleum in Santa Cecilia wouldn’t be completed for another two years), buried at the feet of a statue he’d commissioned when he’d first re-done the grounds.  
  
Del had still been there, living in the guest house and taking care of Dante at the stables, though when he’d come out to show the horse, the fans had thrown things at him and called him a killer. He’d quickly handed the reins over to a muscular young stable hand (who would probably be at the guest house later, if Ernesto knew Del Essará). The police hadn’t found anything worth calling a crime after the bell came down. Ernesto knew this, because his body had languished for three days, insensible and crushed, wrapped in casts and bandages, and he had been loosely tethered to it. Del had been brought in for questioning—Ernesto had been able to float after him—but he’d wept and gnashed his teeth and said, “Ernesto was my best friend! And my only client, if you want to be cynical! I had no reason to kill him!” And it was plausible that the rope could have slipped.  
  
What the police didn’t know, because no one knew except Del, and he was smart enough not to tell them, was that the old whore from Santa Cecilia had been there, that she had asked about Héctor, and that Del had worked himself into quite the foot-stomping tantrum on the subject. “Why did I never know about this man, Nesto? Why do you claim the songs they remember him writing? Where _is_ this man? Tell me where he is, and I’ll call and set my mind at ease about this…”  
  
Ernesto thought he’d managed to get Del calmed down. It was generally easy— _Oh, Del, don’t worry about it, it was a mistake, I’d forgotten about Héctor, you’ve been my best friend for so long, and the songs… oh, please, it was just easier to say they were mine, he sold them to me…_ —and Del had finally swallowed the tantrum and allowed himself, or so Ernesto had thought, to be convinced once more that all was well.  
  
Then he’d started making calls, asking about a few of the spoiled actors that Ernesto hadn’t wanted to work with, and the one actress who thought she was too good for a little quid pro quo. She had told Del that Ernesto had made a few jokes over the years about just how many pretty stable boys had ended up in Del’s bed, and then there had been another tantrum about “You destroyed my career, you bastard!” As if there was anyone who’d ever met Del who didn’t already know.  
  
Again, Ernesto had calmed him down. _It didn’t occur to me that they might not have known. I meant it affectionately, my friend, you know I don’t judge you for it. You know I have always accepted you for what you are, and loved you dearly, even when others might not have…_  
  
And again, it had seemed to work. Ernesto hadn’t thought any more of it, anyway. They’d met with the whore one more time, and Ernesto had told her that Héctor had run away with a woman, even made a sarcastic joke about the subject, and after that, Del had said nothing at all.  
  
It wasn’t like Del could risk doing anything about any suspicions he had; his entire financial life depended on Ernesto’s continued popularity. But looking back over the next few weeks, before the bell came down, hadn’t he noticed Del looking at him in a narrow, suspicious way? Hadn’t his calls become colder and more business-like, right up until that last day? And that last day, it should have set off alarms… Del wanted to walk down memory lane, to talk about old days in the silents, about the parties they’d been to, about the ones they’d held. But Ernesto had taken it as a final acceptance that there was nothing he could do about the songs, the credits, or about whatever might have become of Héctor Rivera. He’d been relieved.  
  
Then the bell came down.  
  
In retrospect, Ernesto supposed he should have arranged for Del to be thrown from a horse the same afternoon that Teresa had first visited him, as soon as it had become clear that he had doubts. Dante was high-spirited and large, and even a good horseman like Del (who had trained the animal since he was a foal and kept him in order on movie sets) couldn’t handle him spooked.  
  
But it was a bit late for that thought. He had followed Del back from the stables, and, while Del drank himself into a stupor in bed, whispered in his ear for hours. _If you ever breathe a word of it, they’ll know what you did, just like I do… You’ll be destroyed if you destroy me, I am still your only financial support—take me away, and you’ll be in the gutter…_  
  
And it had worked. Del had lived for another fifteen years, finally dying from years of abusing his liver, and as far as Ernesto knew, the name “Héctor Rivera” had never passed his lips again.  
  
This sort of thing was strictly against the written laws of the Land of the Dead, like eavesdropping on private moments among the living or taking offerings that were meant for someone else, but it wasn’t against the magical laws. The universe, in the end, didn’t care if you took a bit of vengeance.  
  
And Ernesto fully intended to enjoy his this time. His only regret was that he wouldn’t be able to watch it firsthand. He planned to be out of this pit before the shrew stumbled into it.  
  
He barely noticed crossing from the corridor into the square, though the dull, still heat of the air here insinuated itself into him. He made his way back to his apartment.  
  
Apartment! It was smaller than the master bedroom in his real home. The paint was peeling, and he couldn’t find any decent art here. Maybe he should have asked Varela to get him some of his things from home. Just a little Monet, perhaps, or that Dalí sketch that he’d gotten from one of the restaurants the artist had stiffed. Anything but the contrived, political “folk art” that they sold posters of in the square.  
  
He read the first few chapters of Varela’s book ( _There is much we can’t be certain of in de la Cruz’s childhood, but we do have these records…_ ), enough to satisfy himself that it would do the trick once it was in actual circulation instead of just a subject for interviews on marginal television programs, then he went back out to see if anyone was selling a decent offering of food or art. He had a few years’ worth of guitars and clothes to trade for it, though he still missed his piles of both, plus wine and bread, which had disappeared with his mansion on the pedestal.  
  
“Oye, cabron!”   
  
He looked up from an pile of lackluster Mondrian and Klee posters. One of his neighbors—a kid who’d been shot by police running from some other crime—was waving the early edition of _Más Alla_ at him. “This is how you address your elders?” he asked, though the kid’s smile was actually friendly. He was something of a fan.  
  
“You want to see this. I thought you were keeping up on all this Rivera stuff!”  
  
Ernesto took the offered paper, and read the article the boy was pointing to.  
  
A list of people who’d gotten caught on the other side.  
  
He stared at it for a long moment, a smile spreading over his face.  
  
Then he began to laugh.

*****

  
  
“This is crazy!” Victoria said, pacing around the cluttered little office in the Department of Family Reunions. “When Miguel came here—which they say never happened before—you figured it out in about two minutes. This happens every year to someone. Usually quite a few. How can you not know where my abuela is?” She swung her arm, and a pile of folders went see-sawing to the ground.  
  
“Señorita,” the harried clerk—a tiny man named Vigil—said, running over to start scooping them up. “It doesn’t help to lose your temper!”  
  
Coco could hear her bones rattling in her fear. To slow them, she decided to busy her hands helping with the clean-up. She bent down beside the clerk. “My daughter was raised better, and is sorry. But we are very frightened.” She stacked a pile of folders neatly and handed them to the clerk, who pulled himself up onto his chair and placed them back at the corner of his desk.  
  
“I understand,” he said. “But the two situations aren’t the same. There are only a few known ways for the living to enter the world of the dead, and the only one that could possibly have worked for your bisnieto was a curse of offense against the dead. I seriously doubted he had done an ancient sacrifice, and the most likely cause was theft. He didn’t seem the type to have desecrated a body. And he was here to confirm my guess.”  
  
“But Mamá…” Coco prodded.  
  
He sighed. “There are a lot of ways to get trapped on the other side. Many have come back, with different stories.”  
  
“Then she will come back?” Papá asked dully. It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d brought him into the building. He was sitting on a wooden bench, his hands over his eyes. “Imelda will come home?”  
  
“I can’t say with certainty. About half do.” He took out a notepad and a pen. “Now, tell me again what you saw.”  
  
Victoria, who had the keenest sight, told the story for the third time. “She was coming back with us. But she faded twice. She seemed to be talking to people who weren’t there. Then, as we crossed the barrier, there was a flash of light, and we couldn’t see her anymore. I thought I saw a shadow…”  
  
“It could be an attachment to a place. It could be a kind of… mishap. In the Land of the Living, we might call it a technical malfunction. It could be an error in judgment. She could have simply hit the barrier and…” He realized what he was saying—it was obvious that the next word was “disintegrated”—and smiled awkwardly. “She may have simply become attached to a living person, and they could exorcise her. Or—”  
  
“She was in the past,” Papá said. “She said she kept getting lost in the past. In her memories.” He rubbed his head. “I thought she looked pale somehow. Like she was… I don’t know. Have you ever seen a collage? Frida showed me one. I thought it looked like one piece of garbage pasted to another, but she said, ‘Héctor, you would know if there was something that didn’t fit.’ And she taped a piece of paper to it. It should have looked like all the others, but it didn’t. I could see where it didn’t fit. That was how she looked. Like she’d been taped to the collage of the world. Like she could be pulled off it. I should have known.”  
  
“You had no way to know that, Papá Héctor,” Julio told him.  
  
Papá gave him a distracted nod. To Coco’s great relief, the two of them had become good friends, and Julio’s steady, calming influence was a godsend.  
  
“The past,” Vigil said. “That’s actually good. I’ve heard of it, anyway. He jumped down from his chair and went to the door, looking out at his frazzled secretary, who was trying to plug in the wires on her computer, as Papá had pushed it off the desk when she’d told him they’d need an appointment.  
  
She looked up warily. “Yes, Señor Vigil?”  
  
Vigil said, “Could you send an alebrije for Sister Teresa? She and… oh, that friend.”  
  
“I don’t need to,” the assistant said.  
  
“I beg your pardon?”  
  
“No, I mean, they came about ten minutes ago, with a copy of the paper. They wanted to talk about this. I told them they’d need an appointment, so they are waiting.” She glared at Papá, who was in her line of sight, but he didn’t notice.  
  
“Oh. Well, send them in.”  
  
The assistant scurried off, and a moment later, returned with Sister Teresa and the girl who had guided Papá away from the workshop before Día de Muertos. Coco wasn’t clear on who she was—a taciturn girl with long braids, dressed in the black and red of the anarchists. There hadn’t been time to talk when she’d come. Well, there might have been, but as soon as Papá heard she could lead him to Mamá, any chance of other conversation had left.  
  
Coco had dealt with Mamá after Papá had disappeared, and it had been terrifying.  
  
Dealing with Papá after Mamá disappeared? It was something else entirely. When Papá left, she’d been a small child, and Mamá had put on her best face most of the time. Now she was an adult—several times over—and she could see how very young and frightened Papá was. He’d finally gotten his life back, and she was slipping away from him. She’d always had a sense of him as her papá, but for the first time, she thought she was seeing him as Mamá’s husband. Or, more accurately, as Mamá’s lover. His fury and terror and confusion were the emotions of a young, passionate man. He could have been Miguel, toying with the idea of throwing away everything to follow his young lady to a foreign land. (Coco had, for a while, been quite sure that Miguel would do so. She had been genuinely surprised when he’d told everyone that he and the girl were over, that they’d realized they couldn’t make it work in the real world. She still wasn’t convinced he’d stick with it.)  
  
She’d never thought of it before, but most of them seemed rather stuck at the ages they’d been when they died—except for Mamá. Mamá had been stuck at that horrible moment in her youth for so long that, in the end, it had been _that_ Imelda who survived. The furiously angry one, and now the passionately loving one. It seemed strange to feel so much older than her parents… but in truth, she’d felt that way for a long time in life. Her life with Julio had calmed her down so much, she’d grown up with him, and grown old, and settled into her dearest friendship. Mamá and Papá had never had the chance for that, and now… now they were both in their moment forever.  
  
“Teresa, do you know about this?” Papá asked. “Have you heard something? She said she was… that she kept slipping…”  
  
“Into the past,” the girl said. She looked over her shoulder at Sister Teresa.  
  
The sister nodded. “Go on, Maribel.”  
  
Maribel sat down beside Papá on the wooden bench. “She is… it isn’t the true past. I’ve been…” She sighed. “I was lost for nearly twenty years after the first time I went back. I wasn’t lost in the real past. I was lost in… the regrets. The things I wished. I heard… I heard my baby crying for me, and I kept trying to go to him. But he was always just out of reach. And then I would be somewhere else. I would believe… my husband took me somewhere that we were all safe. Or I went home to my father and sisters. Or…” Papá wasn’t responding. His face was carefully set, and Coco thought that he understood something she didn’t. Maribel sighed. “The point is, I didn’t know I was lost. I had no anchor here. No one who loved me was waiting. No one even knew I was dead, though my sister put my things out just in case. My songs. My flute.” She shook her head. “But your Imelda, she has you to anchor her. If she can find her way through from the living world, she will be able to follow her heart home to you.”  
  
“But how does she find her way through the living world? How did you?”  
  
“For me? Luck. I stumbled on a way. For her… I think you know. She has a guide.”  
  
“Miguel.”  
  
“Well, also her alebrije. But yes. Someone where she is will need to keep her from her driftings and bring her home.”  
  
“Bring her home?” Coco shook her head. “Miguel has to cross again?”  
  
“This is old magic,” Maribel said. “And old magic always requires a sacrifice.”


	15. Interlude 2: The Land of the Living

_I stare into the chasm  
And I scream in endless greed.  
I thought the world would give me  
All I want and all I need.  
  
**********  
  
FROM_ SILENCED: THE VOICE BEHIND ERNESTO DE LA CRUZ  
_by Carlos Navarro  
2019  
Conclusion  
...When I began this project, I knew only that I believed de la Cruz was a fake. That something about him was too calculated, too polished to be real. But what I have learned, what I saw when I looked into the closed eyes of a mummy, when I heard the tears of that man's family, has changed me. The world of the arts has never had a lack of sociopaths. God may know why, but I do not. But what this man did to achieve his fame, the people he destroyed, the possible worlds he crushed... I had thought myself properly cynical, oh so worldly and unflappable. But I learned that I still held some corner of my innocence in the moment it was stripped away. Strangely, I value it more for its loss, and hope someday, to regain the faith I once had. But men like de la Cruz do not make it easy._  
  
“I’ll never understand why he worries so much,” Anja Huttmacher said, rifling through Tobias’s refrigerator for something that was meant to be digested by a human. “His great-great-grandmother! For god’s sake, _my_ great-great grandmother was an actual Nazi, and I admit it to other people. It doesn’t make a difference in who _I_ am to know that she was an evil bitch. Why doesn’t he just accept that she was backwards and controlling and move on? Tobias, don’t you have _anything_ that’s even vaguely green? In a healthy way, not a moldy way.”  
  
Tobias looked up from the piano, where he was noodling around with some of the lyrics in Miguel’s notebook. “You want rabbit food, Schnucki, you’ll need to eat at your own apartment. I’m not a dancer.”  
  
“I’ll shop for you tomorrow. This isn’t healthy. You’re getting a gut. You look like you’re from Texas.” She pulled over the bin and started throwing out the worst offenders. “You really should get some nice carrots and… I don’t know. Anything that doesn’t come in a cardboard box with a list of things you can’t pronounce.”  
  
“I like frozen food.”  
  
“You’re a barbarian.”  
  
“You know it.” He went back to a song that had one of Miguel’s favorite little riffs in it, but was otherwise mostly a blank slate. He didn’t have permission to do this, and Anja figured Miguel would throw an absolute conniption if he heard it, but Tobias wasn’t actually planning to do anything with it. He was just furious that Miguel had quit what he considered a promising new show.  
  
She wrinkled her nose and shut the refrigerator door. “We’ll go out,” she said. “I don’t have time to shop before my meeting with the choreographer. And tomorrow, it’s back to the routine.” She sighed. “I suppose I can shop for you between class and rehearsal. There’s an hour.”  
  
“You don’t need to shop for me. I am perfectly capable of shopping for myself.”  
  
“Not according to your cupboards and your refrigerator.”  
  
“And my gut.”  
  
“And your gut. It’s disgusting. You’re lucky I’m lonely.”  
  
“I perform in the orchestra pit,” Tobias said, his fingers plucking the keys of the piano to sound (vaguely) like guitar strings. “I don’t need to be trim for leaping around in purple mariachi suits.”  
  
“Oh, he eats like a barbarian, too. It’s going to catch up with him if he’s going back to living in the middle of nowhere and doing nothing all day.” She exerted a great deal of effort to keep herself from saying _Ach_ (her father did it all the time, and she’d spent her teen years desperately trying to break the habit; she did _not_ need to sound like an old woman in a bad cartoon) and settled for a shudder. “ _Oaxaca._ Who goes from Vienna to Oaxaca? What a stupid thing to do. I told him over and over… Europe is where the music world lives, at least _serious_ music. He has the biggest names in the business eating out of his hands, and what does he do? He goes back to Oaxaca because someone was calling out his great-great-grandmother. Who _does_ that?”  
  
“Miguel Rivera does, apparently.” He tried a run of notes that didn’t resolve, then sighed. “He’s going to have to write this himself, because I do _not_ have an ear for Mexican music.”  
  
“What’s it about, anyway?”  
  
Tobias shrugged. “It’s the one about the woman who abandoned her baby, as best I can tell. There’s a little Spanish that I walked through Google Translate. But it’s mostly just notes in Riverisch.”  
  
Anja rolled her eyes. She’d never been sure if Riverisch was a result of writing quickly, causing the weird abbreviations and symbols that habitually filled Miguel’s notebooks when he was working, or if it was an actual code, meant to stymy potential thieves. Miguel _said_ it was the former, but given his obsession with what Ernesto de la Cruz had done a hundred years ago, Anja suspected that—maybe unconsciously—it was more of the latter. It was Tobias who had started referring to it as “Riverisch,” when Miguel had accidentally handed him a few pages of it when they were orchestrating _La Niñera_. “So if you can’t read it, what are you doing over there?”  
  
“I can read Riverisch music notations. I had to learn to keep up. He always sketches it out before he puts it on a staff, and when I was working with him?” Tobias shrugged. “If I wanted to see what the piano was doing before he was done with the vocal line, I had to read it in Riverisch.”  
  
Anja frowned. “I saw him writing straight to staff.”  
  
“Not at three o’clock in the morning when he had a hot idea in his head, you didn’t. He did that after he’d stewed on an idea for a while. Riverisch music is the equivalent of waking up in the middle of the night and scribbling down a dream before you forget it.” Tobias considered this. “Of course, when he was with you at three in the morning, I doubt he was composing.”  
  
“If he was, I didn’t know about it. I usually have to be at master class by seven.”  
  
He shrugged. “So, why does he think he has ‘endless greed’?”  
  
“What? _Miguel_?”  
  
“It took a while to figure it out, but it was circled, so I worked on it. A-a-ci sf. I thought at first he was branching up into space opera, but no. In Spanish, that would be cf. Also, there were long threads between the letters. Avaricia sin fin. I got the sin fin first. So what’s the endless greed? Did he accidentally only give ninety-nine percent of his income to that foundation, instead of all one hundred?”  
  
“It’s a play. Maybe it’s a character.”  
  
“Maybe.”  
  
“You should probably put that notebook in an envelope and send it to Santa Middle-of-Nowhere. Work on your own things. I like the one you wrote for my solo. You could make it a main motif in a new ballet. I’d set up a meeting for you with—”  
  
“Oh, no. I am nowhere near pretty enough for one of your ‘meetings.’ Can you imagine Manon finding someone who looks like me across the table? She’d never speak to you again, Schnucki. What kind of trash are you sending to entreat her generosity?”  
  
“So, I’ll set you up with Marcel. He likes the big and tough ones.”  
  
“I think I’ll just keep writing music and shopping it around like a normal person in a real profession. I’m told it works sometimes. Miguel said—and don’t spread around the secret—that he _wrote good songs_ and”—Tobias looked over his shoulder, pretending to check for spy drones—“ _sold them to other musicians at first._ And then…” He put a hand over his chest. “Oh, but it can’t be so. He said that when his parents decided he was old enough for the national stage, he… he _auditioned_ for things, and sent demos, and got a contract that lawyers wrote, and—you’ll find this unbelievable, I’m sure—he had his clothes on the _whole time_.”  
  
“Ha-ha.” Anja turned back to the refrigerator. “And for the record, there’s a good reason he hasn’t gotten any further. He could have had movie deals, you know.”  
  
“I don’t think he wanted them.”  
  
“Who doesn’t want a movie deal?” She gave up on finding anything edible. “They’re doing a musical about ballet, and I lost out on an audition because I was playing by Miguel’s rules. Don’t even try to tell me that Clara Schmid got in on talent.”  
  
Tobias didn’t try. He went back to noodling around with Miguel’s notes.  
  
Anja went to the window (which looked out on a dirty Salzburg alley) and crossed her arms over her chest, anger coming up against her will. Miguel had told her the same story he’d told Tobias, but it had been an entreaty. _Oh, Anja, don’t give in to the Dark Side. Be pure and good and true, like… well, not to be sanctimonious, but like me. You see? The paragon of true virtue, who would never stoop to such craven depths…_  
  
Oh, maybe not the exact words, but she’d heard them lurking nonetheless.  
  
But he’d learn. Eventually, he’d learn. Talent and luck had brought him a long way, but he’d need ambition to go any further. _Real_ ambition. The kind that would clear away the obstacles in his life, and, more importantly, in his own naïve little head.  
  
The world didn’t let anyone have everything.  
  
Sooner or later, Miguel Rivera was going to have to face that fact.  
**********  
  
Carlos usually enjoyed his Conservatory days.  
  
Not that he didn’t _also_ like the days he spent at home writing or teaching private lessons. Since Gabi had been in school, the house was more or less his own space during those days—keeping it up so students weren’t shocked was a chore he rather enjoyed, and when they weren’t around, he had piles of research to do, and at the moment, he was deep in the life of an actress who had turned out to be an American spy. This meant that Denny was involved in the book, getting military records and digging up what secrets she may have found and what nasty little destabilizations she might have been involved with back in the nineteen-fifties. That _also_ meant that the two of them spent a lot of hours out on the patio, drinking beer, shooting darts, and speculating on things that were never going to make it onto the printed page. Not for lack of interest—there would be a great deal—but because neither of them had been able to dig up corroborating evidence. (“Hey, maybe someone should mention that to your friend Varela,” Denny had suggested after the latest interview hyping the upcoming book. “You know, the bit about how we actually found _evidence_ , which he hasn’t.”)  
  
In all, it was a pleasant way to spend his hours.  
  
But it was nice, once a week, to put on decent, professional clothes, polish his glasses, and play at being a respectable professor of music history. Tina arranged to come home early on these days, to make dinner and greet Gabi after school. (For her part, Gabi insisted that eight years old was more than big enough to make her own supper and be alone in the house. After all _Coco_ was almost a shoemaking apprentice, and she was only barely a year—well, a year and a half—older. Neither Carlos nor Tina was inclined to accept this argument.) His classes were popular, thanks to the books, and the students, once they got past whichever book was in vogue at the moment, tended to be serious and respectful. He’d go out to lunch with Moreno, who was planning to retire next year, and then he’d usually find an excuse to go to one of the performance stages and play in their delightful acoustics. Sometimes, he would go out onto the grounds and jam with the students. This was also a pleasant way to spend his hours.  
  
But he’d barely set foot on campus the day after Día de los Muertos before he realized it wasn’t going to be a good day.  
  
There were federal agents waiting at his office.  
  
“I told them you had work to do today,” Moreno said, waving his pipe around angrily. “An eighty year old case isn’t good enough reason for you to miss your classes.”  
  
Carlos sighed and looked at the agents. “Any chance of being finished before 11:30?”  
  
A woman with wire-framed glasses shook her head.  
  
Carlos nodded to Moreno, and handed over his notebook with the day’s lesson plan. “Would you mind…?”  
  
“I’ll take it,” Moreno said grumpily. “But this is ridiculous.”  
  
Carlos couldn’t argue. He opened the door to his office and gestured inside, then took a seat at his desk, which would force the agents into the student chairs.  
  
At least they took the seats meekly, which suggested that they weren’t out to make an arrest for reputation assassination, or some other crime created for the occasion.  
  
“I’m Carlos Navarro,” he said. “What can I do for you?”  
  
The woman introduced herself as Ariceli Guerrera, and her partner as Arturo Chen. “We’re with cold cases, as you might expect, but we’ve been… um…”  
  
“Pressured,” Chen said. “There’s a lot of pressure after the… incident… last night.”  
  
“Incident? What incident?”  
  
“You haven’t read the news?”  
  
“I try to avoid it before my first coffee.”  
  
“There was a fight at the museum. No one really knows who started it, but it was the same old business.” Guerrera wrinkled her nose in distaste. “One side saying that we’re out to destroy a Mexican icon, the other going on about how they hated strong women… stupid things. But it was all over goddamned YouTube. Someone ripped that portrait of the Riveras.”  
  
“Has anyone told the family?” Carlos asked.  
  
“No one was picking up a phone,” Chen answered. “I guess after the kid’s disappearing act, they’re just taking messages or something.”  
  
Carlos made a note to call later. They’d take his call. “So they want you to investigate my investigation into Héctor Rivera’s death?”  
  
“No. I mean, they do, but the department has actually found even more corroborating evidence since you moved on to other things. We have no doubts that Ernesto de la Cruz murdered Héctor Rivera.”  
  
“So what are you investigating?”  
  
“The murder _of_ de la Cruz,” Guerrera said. “ _Possible_ murder.  One of the people rioting was running around in full skull make-up—which makes it hard to know who it was, though my money is on Varela himself—demanding to know why the police are so afraid of one famous little boy that we’re ignoring the murder of Mexico’s greatest star.”  
  
“Of course.” Carlos opened up his laptop and started to boot it up. No point pretending he didn’t know what they were going to ask for. “And exactly which of my pieces of evidence do you want me to send you?”  
  
“We don’t know,” Chen said. “We’re fishing.” He ignored the glare Guerrera gave him, and shrugged. “We’re going to have to look into Essará. The manager? Doesn’t it strike you as strange that a former famous actor, and a high powered agent, was working the backstage crew?”  
  
“Yes,” Carlos said, honestly enough. “It’s unusual. But everything I came across with Essará was unusual. He got de la Cruz into pictures not long after Héctor Rivera’s death.”  
  
“Then he suddenly quit.”  
  
“When sound came,” Carlos said. “Some actors didn’t have the voice for sound.”  
  
“Essará sang,” Guerrera said, pushing over an ancient, yellowing poster that showed a young man singing while standing on a horse—unmistakably a move that de la Cruz had copied later. He was identified as “Antonio Duras,” but of course, that had been Essará’s stage name. “He didn’t get a lot of raves for it, the way de la Cruz did, but Varela has done quite the biography of him. We have the notes. He didn’t have rotten apples thrown at him when he opened his mouth, either. He was apparently a competent singer, and did stage acting somewhere between the carpas and the silver screen. He _could_ speak.”  
  
Carlos looked at the man on the horse—really, just a boy. He’d been drawn with wild long hair streaming out from under his sombrero, but who knew what was really true? It wasn’t a photograph, and the carpas had a long history of over-hyping their acts. He couldn’t tell much.  
  
Chen drew out an old black and white photo. “This is a still from one of his silent films. Not that I notice handsome men all that much, but he seems like a handsome enough man to have made it.”  
  
“Not in the 1920s.” Carlos barely had to look at the picture to know that. Essará had a soft, dreamy face, with large sad eyes… the opposite of the machismo that had been the order of the day during the silents. It was surprising that he’d made it at all. It was…  
  
He frowned. There was something about the picture. Something…  
  
“You see it, don’t you?” Guerrera said. “Who he looks like?”  
  
“Yes and no,” Carlos said automatically, though of course he saw it. Essará didn’t look like Héctor Rivera exactly, but there was something, some quality of his face, something that couldn’t be nailed down to any feature, but seemed to come from him as a whole. It would have been like seeing Miguel’s tatarabuelo out of the corner of one’s eye, disappearing only when you turned to look at him full on. “But so what? Is the working theory that Héctor Rivera’s ghost possessed this man and took revenge?”  
  
The two officers exchanged a look, then Chen said, carefully, “You know about the chorizo…?”  
  
Carlos rolled his eyes. “I think you’ll do better with the ghost possession.”  
  
“Were de la Cruz and Essará lovers?” Guerrera asked flatly.  
  
“Let me check the extensive records kept about things like that in the twenties and thirties.”  
  
“Have you come across anything…”  
  
“I wasn’t looking. What in the hell does it have to do with anything? Do people think lovers routinely drop bells on one another?”  
  
Chen started to mumble and grumble about motives and following the evidence trail, but Guerrera stopped him with a sharp look. “It has nothing to do with anything, but I think you know the play Varela is making. Sympathy. Poor, put upon Ernesto, having to keep so many secrets. It will have nothing to do with whether or not Essará dropped the bell on purpose. That’s just a pretense. It will be entirely about trying to cleanse de la Cruz of the moral stink of the murder of Héctor Rivera.” She gestured again at the photograph.  
  
Carlos wanted to protest that this was absurd, but he could see the logic of the attack. If it wasn’t a venal grab at intellectual property and money, but instead a grand gesture of unrequited and frustrated love…  
  
He sighed. “I can’t tell you anything about it for sure. All I know about Essará is that he was the closest thing de la Cruz had to a friend though his adult life, but from everything I’ve learned about the de la Cruz, that doesn’t mean what it would to anyone else. We know he used sex to manipulate and control women. It’s not out of the question that he would have used it to manipulate and control men, though, given the times, we’re not likely to find any evidence one way or the other. The point is that _all_ of his relationships, whatever their nature, were about manipulation and control. If you want the whole truth, I think Varela’s absolutely right that it wasn’t about the songs. We can get back payment now because everyone understands something about intellectual property, but at the time, songwriters were more or less disposable. I think de la Cruz murdered Rivera because Rivera defied him, because he had something in his life that made him impossible to fully control. I think—though I can’t back this up with anything other than intuition—that from the moment Héctor married Imelda, de la Cruz found that part of his life intolerable and set out to destroy it. When he couldn’t, he destroyed Héctor. Not because of love, but because he was unable to _own_ him, and Imelda was entirely unownable.”  
  
“And Delmar Essará?”  
  
Carlos shrugged. “No idea. But they were close, at least in proximity. If there was anyone in de la Cruz’s life that was likely to put pieces together—to guess what he might have done—it would have been Essará. And if he did figure it out, then dropping that bell was self-defense.”  
  
Chen fidgeted with his stylus and tablet.  “Professor Navarro, we don’t mean to sound like… well, I imagine the question doesn’t sound good.  It’s just going to be a question that Varela will raise, and we wanted a reasonable answer to it.”  
  
“I wish I had one to give you.”  
  
“There are other questions,” Guerrera said.  “Basically, we need to go through anything you have on de la Cruz from the periods not necessarily covered in your book. We have both read it, of course, and it’s in the file, but…”  
  
“But popular, sensationalist nonsense may not hold up, so you want my sources?”  
  
“More or less.” She swiped through her notes.  “Did you find any evidence in de la Cruz’s life that would suggest he might have been a danger to someone close to him?”  
  
“Other than the murder of his best friend?”  
  
Guerrera, refusing to be baited, just said, “Yes.”  
  
“Early information isn’t easy to come by.  The studio’s myth-making machine was pretty thorough, and most of the people who knew him personally had been dead for many years before I started researching.”  
  
“You had access to the recording found among the possessions of Sister Teresa.  Was there anything else of interest in her belongings?”  
  
“I asked the convent if they would send me the rest of her things.  The Riveras told me she was an old nemesis of Imelda’s, but that she was an even older friend, so I thought there might be something besides the record.  Mostly, I found carbons of very dull business letters.”  
  
“Varela says he found a record of her visiting de la Cruz’s business office.”  
  
“Her will stipulated that she be buried in the shadow of his tomb.  I asked around, but the only explanation came from an aging nun who thought she’d heard something about the two of them having once been an item.”  
  
Chen frowned.  “The nun and de la Cruz.”  
  
“She was, presumably, not a nun at the time.”  
  
“Oh. Right.  Of course.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Another working theory,” Guerrera said.  “Supposedly, Imelda Rivera got her to come up here and threaten Ernesto about the songs.  And somehow, this ended up with Essará finding out and dropping the bell.  She _did_ meet with him.  He would have been Ernesto’s gatekeeper.  And we got that poster from the convent.  I guess they didn’t give you everything.  It’s signed to her, you see?”  She turned the poster over to show the half-sarcastic autograph, _To Sister Teresa, who is full of advice. Love, Antonio Duras/Delmar Essará._  
  
“I’d actually heard this one.  Imelda Rivera sent a nun she hadn’t spoken to in years to threaten de la Cruz, then settled for putting out a hit on him instead.  Completely reasonable.” He rolled his eyes.  
  
“What do you know about her?  
  
“The nun?”  
  
“Imelda Rivera.”  
  
“I know she made good shoes, and built a good family.  I know she feuded with a lot of neighbors, and a good handful thought she was too big for her britches.  I also know her family loves her fiercely, and their good opinion is something I trust.”  
  
“And yet, you were not subtle about your dislike of her practices when talked about them in your book.”  
  
“It took me a while to get over the music ban.  Pretty much until I realized that it wasn’t mine to get over, and the family had made their peace with it long ago.”  He sighed.  “She couldn’t have been an easy matriarch.  She was an orphan girl who had raised her brothers since she was five, had a child at barely eighteen—with a seventeen-year-old husband—and then was left alone with the child to raise.  She was proud, stubborn, hurt, and prone to the occasional fit of temper, as even her granddaughter admits.  But she would not have begged for money, she would not have—as she would have seen it—gone crawling to de la Cruz for anything, and she would not have dignified him with an elaborate plan for murder.  I’m no forensic psychologist—if you want one who’s studied my notes, I know an FBI trainee who did an undergraduate thesis on the subject—but from my perspective as a researcher—de la Cruz was much more likely to plot the murder of Imelda than vice versa.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
Carlos nodded.  “Think about it.  A rational murderer would have sent the body home, saying it was food poisoning—oh, so sorry. And here are the contracts we signed for the songs; sorry, but he spent the money already.  But de la Cruz went to great lengths to make sure Imelda felt that she had lost the battle, that Héctor had abandoned her.  There was no reason to do that _except_ to humiliate and shame her.  She, on the other hand, made a single attempt to inquire about the songs, then proceeded to live her life.  Bitterly, angrily sometimes… but with no driving interest in Ernesto de la Cruz.  He would have resented that.”  
  
“And the nun?”  
  
“I don’t know much at all.  They grew up together.  They had a falling out.”  
  
“What about Coco Rivera?  Would she have… wondered?”  
  
“Would a quiet, gentle woman whose entire focus was on her family have sent a nun to kill a movie star?”  
  
Chen cracked a smile. “Well, when you put it like that…”  
  
“I don’t know what happened with the bell.  I don’t know if it had anything to do with anyone finding out about Héctor’s murder, because I don’t know if anyone ever did.  If they did, they kept it quiet.  But whatever it was… don’t let people forget the central fact: Ernesto de la Cruz murdered Héctor Rivera, tried to send the body across the border so it would be permanently lost, and lied to the faces of his widow and daughter about it.  Because he didn’t get his way. Nothing else that Varela or any of the others says makes the slightest difference in that.”  
  
**********  
  
Coco made her way up into the attic crawlspace above the old house, gesturing for Teto to follow. Most of the adults didn’t come up here, though they _had_ put in a trap door and a ladder from the second floor to make the entrance a little safer. The ceiling was low and the light was dim. Even Miguel had mostly stopped coming up here by the time Coco was old enough to remember, though she had a photograph of the two of them in here—a selfie he’d snapped when she was two and he was fifteen, and he’d carried her up on his back. By the time the boys were born, he was too big to fit in comfortably.  
  
The twins came up sometimes when they were smaller, and there was a little collection of martial arts magazines that they’d left here, but mostly, it had been Coco’s.  
  
She’d left what little of Miguel’s collection was left in its place. The de la Cruz stuff was gone (she had once watched one of his movies online and did _not_ understand the appeal), but he still had his first song (El Latido de mi Corazon) thumbtacked to the wall, in the clumsy script of someone still getting used to a staff. There was a picture of him with his old girlfriend, Bridget, and a pin with a Viking helmet on one side and an old, dried lipstick print on the other (gross). He also had printed out a copy of Papá Héctor’s photo, and a bunch of the articles about how they’d proved the songs were his. Coco had read these eagerly as soon as she learned to read. She liked the story.  
  
But most of the wall space now was taken up by her own art. She’d started painting flowers when she was seven, and now, the walls and ceiling were a wild jungle, with bright birds flying through the vines. She’d put a sticky LED light among the vines as well, so she’d have her own personal sun (though she also liked the crystal draped lamp that could make twinkling stars). When the walls were full, she’d painted the floor—a dark pool with glittering fish and sun dappled waves.  
  
She liked music—she always would—but it didn’t fill her up the way drawing and painting did. She wanted to paint her family up here, but she hadn’t left any room. Maybe she’d do it on the back of the shoe.  
  
Teto pulled himself up over the top of the trap door and hauled himself over the floor, pretending to swim in the pool. He said hello to the fish—he’d given each of them a name, though Coco couldn’t remember them—and then hoisted himself up onto one of the crates they’d dragged up to sit on. “Will Mamá Imelda come here?” he asked. “This was her house.”  
  
“Maybe,” Coco said. “But I was thinking about Miguel. We should sing for Miguel here. It’s his place, really.”  
  
“Miguel will be all right. Miguel can do anything.”  
  
“But he asked us to _help_.” Coco leaned over the trap door and reached down for her guitar, which she’d left leaning against the wall on top of an old dresser. It was less likely to get banged up this way. She drew it carefully through the hole, then closed the door so Teto wouldn’t decide he was diving in a cenote and land on Mamá Elena’s old sewing machine. Little kids weren’t very smart. “So… you know…”  
  
She paused. Below her, she thought she heard a faint, distant muttering, things being thrown around.  
  
Then it was gone.  
  
Teto had obviously heard it, too, because he gave her a smug smile.  
  
“Okay, fine, she’ll probably come here. But she needs to be _there_ , where Miguel went.”  
  
“Where did Miguel go?”  
  
“The old orphanage, remember? Papá Franco said there were caves.”  
  
“Maybe we could tell her to go there!”  
  
Coco was about to dismiss it out of hand. It wasn’t why they were here, and it wasn’t what Miguel had asked her for.  
  
But it did sort of make sense.  
  
“Okay,” she said. “How?”  
  
“Mamá Imelda!” Teto called. “You should go up to the orphanage!”  
  
“It can’t be that simple.”  
  
“What do orphanage people sing?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“What did Mamá Imelda look like when she was there? We could imagine her!”  
  
“We don’t have any pictures of her then.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“There weren’t as many cameras.”  
  
“Didn’t she have a phone?”  
  
“There were no phones. Especially not ones with cameras.”  
  
“Wow. How long ago _was_ it?”  
  
“I don’t know. It was… I think it was before the Revolution.” Teto gave her a confused look—he hadn’t had any history yet—and she bit her lip. She wasn’t totally sure. She whipped out her phone and got the dates for the Revolution, and sure enough, Mamá Imelda would have been a kid when it happened. Maybe even in the orphanage.  
  
It couldn’t hurt.  
  
She pressed voice activation and said, “Songs from the Revolution.” To her great annoyance, it turned up some English song called “Yankee Doodle,” so she clarified, “Songs from the _Mexican_ revolution.”  
  
Sure enough, a selection of corridos came up.  
  
Coco pressed “play,” and the past wove itself into the air around her.  
  
And downstairs, the muttering stopped.  
  
Vaguely, she heard someone call, “Oscar? Felipe?”  
  
And then there was silence.


	16. Chapter 16

Imelda was flinging things across the room. She didn’t know why. She didn’t remember how she’d come to be here in her bedroom. In _their_ bedroom, surely. But Héctor wasn’t here with her. She was tearing through the room, her clothes flung onto the floor, and Teresa stood there in the doorway, looking like a surprised and frightened little

  
_(Oh, Mausi)_  
  
mouse.  
  
She shook her head. The other voice had come from nowhere and everywhere, disdainful and haughty.  
  
“Go on!” Imelda yelled, throwing clothes at her with abandon. “Take them, _Sister_. Take them all, and leave. The poor need them, don't they? I seem to recall you needing lots of pretty dresses when you were poor. The more of your bosoms they showed, the better.”  
  
“Imelda, stop!”  
  
And Imelda _wanted_ to stop. She didn’t know why she was doing this. The dresses she’d spent so many hours on… the purple gown she’d worn the day she married Héctor… all of them. Why were they on the floor? Why…  
  
But then she was in another room, and it wasn’t the dresses. It was a trumpet and a Victrola and all of the notebooks, all of Héctor’s notebooks, with the chicken scratches of his first drafts, and he would need those when he came home from the tour.  
  
But the tour had to be over. It had been so long. Two years.  
  
No.  
  
No, it couldn’t have been. He’d just left. He’d left in the rain, and she’d been angry, but he’d be back in only three months. Three months. How ridiculous to be angry. What a waste of their last moments, spent in fury and resentment.  
  
_(last moments?)_  
  
Something cold— _familiar_ and cold—tried to form in her mind. But it was ridiculous. Héctor… he was home by now. He had to be home. He was just in the square, playing his songs for the people. Coco was dancing with him. They would come home for supper later, and he would tell her fabulous lies about the fancy people who’d heard him. _Did I say the king of Spain? Oh, that was a lie. It was the Holy Father, come from Rome… no, no, that’s also a lie. Who was it really, Coco? Was it the man in the moon?_  
  
And they would spin their stories over each other until she started laughing, and then they would count their blessings, and maybe create more blessings, and they would be _happy_.  
  
So why was the pile of his things growing in front of her? Why was she throwing them at the nun, like weapons or…  
  
Teresa opened her mouth and said, “Imelda, you are a complete hypocrite!”  
  
And then they were in the theater, and Teresa ran off, her red dress flouncing behind her in a cloud of cheap perfume. It was a ridiculous outfit for a girl of fifteen.  
  
Héctor rolled his eyes. “She’ll get over it.”  
  
Imelda straightened her top. “I hardly think a kiss or two—”   
  
“Or three or twenty,” Héctor added unhelpfully.  
  
“—is exactly the same thing I’ve been talking to her about.”  
  
He raised his eyebrows. “She’s had a hard time of it, Imelda.”  
  
“That’s her own damned fault. I told her about Ernesto. I’ve told _you_ about Ernesto. I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen about that snake.”  
  
_And I’m so glad you warned me,_ Héctor should have said. _I’ll never disappear with him. I’ll stay home with you._  
  
And she would say, _Or I’ll come with you, and we’ll dance forever, and I’ll hold you, and you’ll hold me, and we will be all right._  
  
But what came from his mouth was, “No one’s pretending he’s a saint. But he’s not so bad.”  
  
And what came from hers was, “He’s much worse, and you’re crazy to be anywhere near him.”  
  
“He’s my friend. And if I listened to _his_ rants, I’d stay away from _you_ before you chain me up and turn me into a lapdog. So should I start listening to rants?”  
  
“My rants are true.”  
  
He smiled and kissed her again, and she felt his hands slipping up her sides, over her blouse for now, but…  
  
She pulled away. “We should get back to practicing. Let me finish up your shoes.”  
  
She picked up the second-hand low-heeled boots Héctor had gotten somewhere and continued the line of small nails she was putting in the left heel so the sound would be louder when his foot hit the boards. The right was done. Her own were done. It wouldn’t be long before they were dancing again—there were only so many hesitations she could stand—and if she danced with him much longer today, Teresa might not be as wrong as she had started out.  
  
While she worked, Héctor practiced the steps he’d seen the flamenco dancers doing earlier. He picked up steps with maddening ease. She wasn’t _bad_ , and she could improvise quite well, but these real steps, this learned footwork… it was like the guitar. She had to work at it. Héctor seemed to understand it in his bones.  
  
The tapping of his bare feet became louder, and she looked up at him, and almost screamed, because instead of Héctor, instead of the sweet boy who had occupied so many of her thoughts, there was a ghoul, a skeleton with gold markings around his eyes and loose, bony ankles and…  
  
…and then he grinned, and he was just Héctor again, and he said, “Mamá Imelda, you should go to the orphanage.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I said we should go back up the hill,” Héctor said. “School is out soon. And the twins are probably already on the way home.”  
  
“They’d better not be,” Imelda said. “I work my fingers to the bone to keep them in school. They’d _better_ stay until the padre chases them out with a ruler. And their grades…”  
  
Héctor, who had never darkened the door of a schoolroom, just laughed.  
  
“It’s not funny. If I could take in any more sewing, I’d send you, too.”  
  
“ _Send_ me? Am I one of your wards now?” He grinned and ran a finger down her nose, trailing it over her lips in a very un-ward-like way.  
  
“No!” She sighed. “You know what I mean. I’d love to make enough for everyone to get an education.”  
  
“And what about you?”  
  
“I took my classes for a long time. I was good at them. Math, especially.”  
  
He shrugged. “Nesto taught me to read. He says if you can read, then you can pick up anything else that’s important.”  
  
“Yes, but you don’t know what’s important. Do you even know what the fighting’s about?”  
  
“Everybody says something different. Gonzalo says his son is fighting with Pancho Villa, and they’re going to give all the land back to the poor people, instead of the rich people.”  
  
A phantom smell of smoke came into Imelda’s head, and then she was in her nursery, and screaming to her niñera to let her go back for her story book, but there was no time, and they had to take care of the babies, and the niñera was wrapping Oscar’s blanket around Imelda’s shoulders and tying it tight to secure him and saying, “He’s too big for you, but you must be very strong now because you will have to be a grown-up lady tonight…”   
  
The smoke rose up around her, and she was in the gray now, in a mist of nothing, where everything in her life was all in the same spot, all there to be held onto. She thought of her storybook, which the niñera had read to her from every night. It had been ordered from Spain, and it had beautiful drawings in it, of Don Quixote and also of other stories from other lands, where they had names like Arthur and Lancelot, who had swords, or Rapunzel, who had long golden hair, or the girl with the tiny, pretty shoes. Imelda had wanted shoes like that. The book would have burned, its pages curling up into the night, and just for a moment, she felt its loss as keenly as she had in the niñera’s home the next night, curled in bed and imagining her book opened in front of her, imagining the world beyond her nursery. And she felt the guilt over missing something so silly and frivolous, like the silk nightgown and the babies’ fine blankets that had been burned in the fireplace. How stupid. How not grown-up. What did that matter?  
  
“…but I think that everyone’s saying that now,” Héctor said, and she was back in the old theater. The floorboards had been painted blue for some reason, like the stage was a lake, and fish swam around Héctor’s feet. Then it was clear again. He shrugged. “I think the Constitutionalists are a little less wild, and the Villistas got reckless last month in Celaya. The Zapatistas? Who knows?” He shrugged. “I’m kind of mad at all of them for hurting you and the twins, though. That wasn’t right.”  
  
Imelda frowned. “You know about Celaya.”  
  
“People were talking about it, so I found a newspaper and read about it.” He grinned. “See? I do know _some_ important things. I’m not stupid.”  
  
“I never thought that!” Imelda sighed. “Actually, I think I’m mad because you’re too smart to not have any education. It’s a waste of resources.” She tossed him his new dancing shoes.  
  
He put them on, and tapped out a quick rhythm on the boards, which delighted him. “Someday, I’ll be the world’s smartest dancer, then. I’ll go to a university for it.”  
  
“Do they have universities for that?”  
  
“I don’t know. But I’d go to one! I’d like a school for that.” He smiled. “Wouldn’t that be fun, to go to school and just do music? You know… instead of long lists of boring names and politics and numbers and things, you have singing lessons and dancing lessons and guitar lessons. I could even learn piano!”  
  
“I think that’s pretty much like a marimba, except the hammers are on the inside.”  
  
“I’d learn _every_ kind of music. I’d even be able to understand songs in other languages! And I’d learn to dance with you in a long dress, with jewels draped over you.”  
  
“That would get in the way of _me_ dancing. Or were you in the long dress?”  
  
“I was thinking of you, but imagine it as you like.”  
  
“Ha-ha.” She laced up her own shoes. “But all those draped up jewels would trip me, and they’d clatter on the floor, and your hands would get tangled up.”  
  
“That would be a problem.”  
  
Out in the square, for some reason, a drummer and a flute player started a very silly sounding piece, then stopped abruptly. Héctor didn’t seem to hear it. He tried a move where he jumped up onto a low table, but the table was rickety, so he turned it into a kind of swooping turn and spun back down, landing lightly on the floor as if it was what he had intended all along. “Dance with me,” he said, and held out his hands. She rose, and they began the formal flamenco they’d been working on but then somehow they were up on the hill, and Héctor was playing “La Llorona” while she sang to the stars, her feet spinning in the dirt while the little children clapped. The twins were coming up the hill, carrying one of their silly inventions between them, and as the song ended, she called to them. “Oscar? Felipe?”  
  
“Hey, hermana,” Felipe called. “We’ll just…”  
  
“You are very, very late.”  
  
“Felipe is making a telescope,” Oscar said, and they were behind the house now somehow. “Father Robles had one that broke, and he gave us the lenses.”  
  
“You have to stack them,” Felipe said. So they all magnify what the last one was magnifying, and then you can see the moon.”  
  
“I can already see the moon,” Imelda said. “It’s right there.” She pointed up to the bone white circle in the sky, except that it was a deep shade of orange and something inside it was glowing.  
  
“I could see the men _living_ on the moon,” Felipe said. “I could see the flowers and the trees on the moon.”  
  
“Flowers…”  
  
“Yes. There would be…”  
  
“Cempazuchitl…”  
  
The world went gray again, though somewhere, she could still hear the twins talking, and Héctor was teasing them about a girl, and there was a pool of orange at Imelda’s feet, glowing golden from within.  
  
“Héctor?” she said quietly.  
  
He didn’t answer.  
  
“Mamá Imelda?” someone whispered from deep in the marigolds. “Mamá Imelda, you need to come here. You need to be here.”  
  
“Héc…” Her eyes widened. No. Not Héctor. “Miguel!”  
  
“Can you hear me? Follow my voice. We’ll get you home.”  
  
“I… I am home…”  
  
“No. We’ll get you back to Papá Héctor. And Mamá Coco.”  
  
_Coco_.  
  
The memory of Coco came back to her now, her little girl in trenzas, the reason for everything.  
  
She dove into the marigolds.  
  
There was a bright, startling moment when everything was laid out before her—her life, her past, her parents. She could see the hacienda in Guerrero and her niñera, Agapita, and she could see her long, pained life like it was written on the walls of old temples. She saw the ships sailing from Europe. She saw far into the future, Miguel’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and the rise of tall, glowing buildings shining in the Oaxacan night.  
  
And then she was through.  
  
Most of it went away.   
  
She was standing in a low-ceilinged cavern. Miguel was sitting on a rock, cradling his guitar— _her_ guitar, the same one that had been strapped over her back when she’d crossed the bridge last night. When she’d started back. When she’d gotten lost.  
  
She looked down.  
  
She was still wearing her purple gown, but she seemed to have an ethereal sort of flesh on her bones. So did Miguel.  
  
“Where have you brought us, Miguel?” she asked. “You can’t stay here. Look at yourself. You’re half dead. You need to go home.”  
  
He smiled. “Not until I’m sure you’re back where you belong. I don’t know where this is. A cave in the hills. Maybe it wasn’t there yesterday.”  
  
“By the orphanage. It was always here, but, if I recall, it was shallow and had some bats in it.”  
  
“Maybe it changes if an alebrije brings you.”  
  
“An alebrije brought you?”  
  
“Dante. I think he’s been wanting to bring me for a couple of days, but there was no time. Pepita is here, too.”  
  
Imelda ground her teeth, then called, “Pepita! Miguel doesn’t belong here. Why would you lead him here?”  
  
Miguel shook his head. “She’s here for you. She’s worried about you.”  
  
“I got myself into this. I can get myself out.”  
  
“I don’t think so. And _I_ got you into it.” He held up a hand before she could argue. “Not on purpose, and…” He sighed. “This is a walk we have to take together.”  
  
“I don’t want you getting hurt.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Imelda crossed her arms over her chest and took a deep breath. She felt the air fill her lungs. She was aware of her lungs in a way she hadn’t been in the living world, because she knew they shouldn’t be here. _Weren’t_ here, really. This place wasn’t real in either world.  
  
Of course, where she’d been wasn’t real anymore, either. That past had disappeared, all of its possibilities and passions fading along with it.  
  
She felt suddenly weepy, and shut her eyes before the feeling could leak out of them. “Someone brought me here,” she said. “I heard the song. La Llorona. And it brought me back here. Was that you?”  
  
Miguel frowned. “No. I don’t know what that was. Where were you before?”  
  
“I’ve been everywhere. I don’t know if I can stay here. Every time I think I’ve settled, I’m somewhere else.”  
  
“I think I can anchor you here until we figure out how to fix this.”  
  
“You can’t do this. I can’t let you do this. Go _home_ , Miguel. Let me deal with this.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“No? Just like that, you disrespect my rules?”  
  
“It’s not the first time I’ve broken one of your rules. It’s not disrespect. But I promised Papá Héctor that I’d do everything I could to fix things. I can do this.”  
  
“No, you can’t. This is insane. If this is some kind of place in between, then I’ll find my way around. You aren’t going where I am.”  
  
“No, but I can walk you to the border.”  
  
“The border?” Imelda ground her teeth. “Miguel, this is not a day trip to Chiapas. This is not a line on a map that they need to hire someone to paint a sign for, or a soldier to patrol. This is a _real_ border. I don’t want you near it.”  
  
“I’ve crossed it before, and I came back from it.”  
  
“Because of magic that won’t work this time! You’re not cursed, so I can’t just give you a blessing. _And_ it’s not Día de los Muertos, so the bridge is gone.” She put her hands on her hips (how strange it felt to have even ghost flesh on them), and took a few steps into the cave, looking down one of the side passages. “No. No. I insist you go home.”  
  
“I will. As soon as I’m sure you’re safe.” She turned to find him with his hands resting loosely on his own hips, his eyebrows raised, a defiant sort of glint in his eyes. He smiled. “I can match you beat for beat, Mamá Imelda. You know it. Last time, I just ran off on my own. This time, I’ll stay with you.”  
  
“You’re a bullheaded child.”  
  
“Yes.” He smiled more broadly. “It’s good to see you again.”  
  
“It’s always good to see you, mijo. That isn’t the question here.”  
  
“Well, maybe not for you, but I don’t get to see you every year.” He nodded down one of the tunnels. “Dante and Pepita are somewhere ahead, scouting. I told them I’d wait for you here.”  
  
“What do we do? Where are we going?”  
  
“I don’t know.” He gave her a rueful smile. “I’ve never done this before, not in this direction. I don’t suppose there’s a handy Office of Aid to Wayward Ghosts or something?”  
  
“I’m sure there is. Probably buried in the basement of the Department of Family Reunions. They’ll help us out as soon as we get there. At which point we won’t need help anymore, because we’ll have figured the whole thing out.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“But I should go alone, Miguel. Or just with Pepita. You need to go back to the Land of the Living. You don’t belong here. It could hurt you, like it almost did before. I won’t have that on my conscience.”  
  
“And you think I want to leave you wandering around in a cave and have _that_ on _my_ conscience?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’re in this together until I see you safely across.”  
  
“Miguel, I am not joking. I absolutely forbid you to take one more step. I got myself into this.”  
  
“I got you into it,” he said again.  
  
“I thought we’d covered that.”  
  
“I should have left family business in the family and not dragged everyone out on stage.”  
  
Imelda sighed. “It’s a good play, Miguel. I saw the music on the ofrenda. It’s a good story, and that’s why I always told it. Besides, how were you going to keep my little oddities to yourself when the whole world hangs on your every word?” She smiled. “I’m _proud_ of you. And I can’t wait to watch the recording you made of the show. My stories are your stories, and you’re welcome to use them as you see fit.”  
  
“Really? You would want me telling the world about… everything?”  
  
“Only if it’s the story you want to tell. Or you could tell a wonderful story about a princess on the moon and how she builds a rocket ship. You don’t need to lock yourself into all of this.”  
  
“A rocket ship?”  
  
“Why not? Héctor’s been writing about Vikings and leprechauns lately, not murderous, or duplicitous con men. Not even La Llorona… not the one in the song, the other one, the one at the river.”  
  
“Is she real?”  
  
“I wouldn’t know. If she is, she’s…” Imelda’s voice trailed off. The other one, the angry spirit who drowned children in rivers… She’d been about to say, _She’s stuck on the other side._  
  
But of course, that was where Imelda had been. Stuck. Trapped. If she stayed, would she become a mad, wailing woman on a riverbank, luring children to their deaths? What if that was why every story of her was different? Because she existed in a hundred, a thousand forms? A thousand wailing women, trapped on a hundred riverbanks, lost in their memories forever, trying to change what could never be changed, to atone for sins they could never take back.  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
She nodded, but before she could elaborate, a joyous bark came from the tunnel ahead, and she saw Dante bounding out of the shadows. A tiny black and white blur streaked out from beside him and launched itself toward Imelda, and a moment later Pepita was climbing her skirts. She plucked the cat up—she had a great deal of practice doing this without damaging the dress—and held her by her face. She purred and nuzzled against Imelda’s ear.  
  
Miguel put a hand on Dante’s neck and scratched the tiny patch of hair between his ears. “Good boy. Did you find the way?”  
  
Dante barked.  
  
Imelda looked at him, then did a double take. “Miguel… why is your dog wearing a shirt?”


End file.
